Protocol for Unused Accounts?
Watchtower is alerting me to change pw for website accounts I no longer use. Does safety require that I update the passwords anyway, or do I ignore the warnings? I suppose I can delete the accounts, too. Or, at least, I can try. Any recommendations?
1Password Version: 1Password 6
Extension Version: Version 6.6.2 (662005)
OS Version: 10.12.3 (16D32)
Sync Type: Dropbox
Referrer: forum-search:Watchtower is alerting me to change pw for sites I no longer use. Do I update or ignore?
Comments
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Hi @liz_wagner,
That's a really good question. I'm not sure that we have an official recommendation for this, but here's what I do for these:
- I sign on to that site, and I actually change the password to something super strong. Just crank up the length.
- After that if at all possible via the site, I delete the account. Often it's actually not possible do to this.
- I delete the entry out of 1Password
You might wonder why I bother changing the password for something I don't ever plan on using again. It could probably be argued that it's overkill, but I do this because of the fact that sites don't always have the option to actually delete the account. And sometimes while they have a button that says "delete account", when you go through that process, the service doesn't actually delete your data (this happens far more often than people think). If they're going to hang on to some of my data, I'm going to make them hang on to data that's not going to be crackable if ever they get hacked.
Then since I'm done with the account and have no use for it, well might as well throw away the key.
Rick
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Rick, thanks for your reply. It's these "inbetween" situations that are so niggling!
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Good advice @rickfillion, I usually just delete the item out of 1Password but might as well crank it before you ditch it. Two years ago I actually bought my own throw away domain that has a web script to randomly creates e-mail addresses for all these sites that I sign up for that I know I won't end up keeping an account for. That way when I leave I don't even leave a real e-mail behind.
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That's an interesting solution. :)
Rick
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