Forgot something?
Any soul who has been unfortunate enough to embrace the internet would have come across the "Forgot Password" sign at some point. Aah yes, it is one of those "If I can make it up now, I can remember it fifty years from now" things but you fail miserably just five minutes later. The internet just took off in the early 2000s and there really was no "social media" back then although the concept was always relevant in other avatars like Yahoo Messenger and MySpace (remember the cool homepages?). Since the fun services were hard to come by, the emails that you were required to sign up for were also really short in number. Those were the days way before you had phones in your pocket but things like PocketPCs were there in a corporate environment. This meant signing up for any online service meant you required just an email address and with not many free email providers, you end up signing up for burner email ids and sticking with those. I should also mention at this point that Gmail was in its beta stage and you could only sign up for them if someone sent you an invite to join in.
Now most millennials at this point would register some random emails with a password that would come up in their mind immediately and assume they would be easy to remember when you need them. This wasn't such a bad practice back in the day because there simply was no concern with regards to data theft and social profile hacking wasn't a thing (yet). But as social media started to gain traction and how much information regarding a person was mapped to an individual via his/her profiles, the risk became too much to ignore. The impending smartphone boom and to have these services in the comfort of your pocket meant such information had enormous value and had some filthy hand waiting to grab them. Even government services rolled out services to make our existence valid and what is the common starting point to all of this? Yup, that relic called email address. You want to sign up for Facebook? Confirm email. Bank wants you to confirm your information? Email. Need to send sensitive documents? Email it is!
How can you keep track of all of this data with your not-so-smart brain in the modern age? Simple, just follow some digital hygiene. Now do bear in mind that this does not happen in a few hours or days, you really need just some patience for this. Pick up a pencil and paper to note down your frequently used services like social accounts. Try to keep the credentials and their respective recovery options up to date and note down the same somewhere safe. Also make it a point to enable 2FA wherever possible as although it ain't foolproof, it does help a lot to combat cyberattacks to a good extent. Shut down accounts that you no longer need as leaving them open means you're exposing yourself out there. Remember that what appears rubbish to you may be a goldmine to a hacker. Modern-day incidents like identity theft are often regarded as a result of the above as hackers always scout for old inactive accounts as they offer legitimacy to an unsuspecting victim when an exploit is deployed. And finally, the thumb rule, control what you share on the internet. It doesn't matter who you are in life but virtual space is a lot different and significantly parallel one that often has a nasty pitfall. Unlike real life, the wounds inflicted here could often be difficult to heal.
Until next time...Happy Surfing :)