Before Holiday Shopping, Take a Look at Your Online Accounts
The holiday shopping season is about to send a lot of “Welcome! Your account is ready” emails your way. A new store for one gift. A shipping tracker. A loyalty program that knocks 15% off at checkout. Each one takes thirty seconds to create, and most are forgotten by January.
That adds up. A 2024 NordPass survey of its users found people keep around 168 passwords for personal accounts. Ask most people to list theirs and they’ll stop somewhere around 20.
Why accounts slip out of view
Accounts pile up for ordinary reasons:
- One-time purchases. You made an account to buy one thing, years ago, and never went back.
- “Sign in with” buttons. Logging in with Google, Apple or Facebook is fast, so you rarely notice a new account was created.
- Old email addresses. Accounts tied to a college or old work address are easy to lose track of.
- Free trials and apps. Streaming trials, travel apps and game sign-ups often outlive the reason you joined.
An account you forgot about still holds your name, email and sometimes a saved card or home address. If that company has a data breach, your information is part of it, whether you remember the account or not.
A quick account check before you shop
You don’t need a whole weekend for this. Start here:
- List the accounts that matter most. Email, banking, the stores you’ll shop this season and anywhere a card is saved.
- Close what you don’t use. If you won’t shop there again, delete the account rather than leaving it dormant.
- Remove saved cards you don’t need. Keep payment info only where you shop often.
- Update reused passwords. Give your important accounts their own strong, unique password.
- Turn on multifactor authentication. CISA recommends turning it on for every account that offers it, starting with email, banking and social media.
The hard part is step one. You can’t review an account you don’t know exists, and searching your inbox one store at a time gets old fast.
Meet MERENA+ Account Finder
That’s why we built Account Finder, coming soon in MERENA+.
Instead of making you remember, search or type anything in, Account Finder looks for the accounts created in your name and brings them to you. You review each suggestion and confirm or dismiss it. Once confirmed, the account becomes part of your MERENA profile, so MERENA can watch for threats that touch it.
The difference is big. Building a profile by hand, you might add 20 accounts. With Account Finder, you can see 100 or more, including the ones you forgot existed. Results may vary by individiual.
That’s a better starting point for the checklist above, and for the rest of the year.
One small step this week
Before the first holiday order goes in, take ten minutes to see what’s out there. Knowing your accounts is the first step to looking after them.
