Over the course of our long and storied lives online, most of us have signed up for many online accounts, only to have them fall by the wayside, unused forever.
Now, the email address or a phone number you surrendered for registration can be misused. It's time to ask yourself, “How do I find all accounts linked to my email address?”
It's best to revisit all your accounts to update your credentials or deactivate them, but it's not always as easy as hitting the “Find My Account” button. Here are some ways you can find all accounts linked to your email address or phone number.
1. Find Accounts Linked to Email for Free
If you're prone to signing in to apps and websites through an email platform's quick authorization button, chances are, you won't have to dig too deep to search accounts by email and review your most recently created accounts.
For accounts that you've created by “Signing Up With Google”, you can simply head over to Gmail's security settings. From there, you can go through the list of connected apps to edit or revoke their access.
To visit this section on Google, go to the My Account dashboard and click the Security tab on the left.
Scroll down until you come across Third-party apps with account access and hit Manage Third-Party Access.
From here, you'll be able to manage the settings for each app you've connected to your account. You'll also be able to see some information about what the app has access to.
To revoke access for any of the accounts listed, click on the app or website's name and hit Remove Access.
2. Find Social Sign-Ins With Facebook and Twitter
You can also browse all of the apps and websites you've logged into using your social media accounts.
To do so on Twitter, head on over to Settings and privacy under More from the sidebar. Under Security and account access, click on Apps and sessions. You'll be able to check out any accounts that you have linked through your Twitter profile.
On platforms like Facebook, you can specifically decide what you want to share or cut off. For instance, you can stay connected to a third-party account while disabling its access to the pages that you like on Facebook.
3. Search Your Inbox for Account Verification Messages
Another method is to hunt down the confirmation emails from each account creation in your inbox.
Search for common subject lines these services send you whenever you register for a new account. A few that work well include “signing up” and “thank you”, and keywords like “confirm” or “confirming”.
You can also use Gmail's search operators and keywords for filtering specific subject lines. “Subject: verify” will fetch all the emails with subject lines containing the word “verify”, to name one example.
This allows you to discover roughly every app you've linked to your email address.
Services like EmailExport can do this for you automatically. The website will comb through your emails and organize the results into a convenient spreadsheet. The service is not free, and it does ask you to hand over a lot of personal data. If you're determined to find all accounts by email, however, it can save you a lot of time.
4. Instantly Check All Accounts Linked to Your Email
Deseat is another great account-finder by email if you're looking for ways to find all accounts linked to an email address for free.
The web app indexes your inbox and cuts off all of the third-party apps you've signed up for through the account. You can then go down the list and decide how to proceed from there.
To revoke access, choose Request Removal for the listed app or service. Clicking this will generate a pre-written data removal request for the company in question.
Just like with EmailExport, the security of any sensitive information that you have in your inbox should be taken into consideration, the same as with any company.
5. Find All Online Accounts With a Username
If there's a username you often enter for new accounts, you can tap into Namechk. The domain finder and username checker tool will scan for a username's availability across dozens of platforms, as well as in domain-form.
Just type in your most commonly chosen username in the search bar at the top, and Namechk will tell you if it has been taken. It's easy and completely free.
6. Check Your Browser's Saved Accounts
Whenever you fill out a form field on the internet, your browser caches your input, so you don't have to manually type in your info next time. This applies to email addresses and passwords, too.
You can visit your browser's settings and go through the list to find any accounts associated with email addresses long-past that you may have forgotten about. Your success will depend on how long you've been using the browser, so you might have to revisit some of your previous browsers.
On Google Chrome, the option will be found under Settings. From here, Autofill, and then Passwords. You can browse the entries, update them, and delete them if you don't want them.
Mozilla Firefox users can navigate into their Settings. Through Privacy & Security, they can access their Login and Passwords stash. Their Saved Logins will be where they can find all online accounts.
Sort Your Online Accounts With a Password Manager
It's unlikely you will be able to track down every online account you've ever created. These solutions will help you find accounts linked to an email without asking for every single off-the-cuff account creation that you've left in your wake.
Once you have done so, it's best to make the transition to a secure password manager. You'll be able to keep tabs on your online presence without the hassle or the worry associated with doing it on your own.