It often feels that it is not possible to get access to anything these days without giving your email address. Consequently, businesses often create additional and temporary accounts for very specific purposes. Such as a temporary email to communicate with a specific supplier or business, another account for a consultant or work experience person that was only with the business for a few weeks, a gmail account for Google+ are just a few examples… Once set up these accounts may be used only sporadically, so it is easy for you to forget them completely. So March is the month for checking for lapsed email accounts.
Who left the business?
Often when people leave a business their emails are forwarded onto another person, which is brilliant, but then you can too easily forget to delete the account. With Office 365, and other paid for services, this may be costing the business money – you may be paying extra for an account that doesn’t receive emails any more. So, who left the business last year? Are you still paying for their email address/account but not using it? Don’t forget to archive any important emails before you delete the account.
Did you create any other email accounts last year that you are no longer using?
I personally create temporary emails accounts for Internet sites where I am not confident about the security – it is very easy to lose track of such accounts. If you do the same, are there emails that you need to keep for your records? Can you delete the accounts? Or repurpose them for another business use?
Are any email accounts used only very occasionally?
If so, who is responsible for checking them and when were they last checked? Our gmail account for Google+ is the one we often forget to check – time for me to change it so that it is forwarded on to me automatically.
Are the email accounts listed on your website / social media accounts / company literature still active?
It is all too easy to tidy up your email accounts and miss the fact that one of them is listed on your website or company brochures. March might be a good time for you to check what is being used in marketing and company literature and then confirm that the account is still active.
Are there any email accounts you must not let expire?
Free email accounts can be automatically terminated by the provider if there is no activity on the account. So if you have such an account and it is important to you, don’t forget to use it.
Often old, lapsed email accounts were created when password security did not need to be quite so rigorous. Unfortunately, these days, criminals are targeting small businesses. So lapsed email accounts are no longer just a general housekeeping task, they now have the potential to pose a security risk. So they need to be managed a little more rigorously than in the past.
Rebecca Mansbridge
Director
March 2017