Guide
How to find old accounts you forgot about
The accounts you remember are not the problem. The problem is the forum you joined in 2014, the shop that needed an account for one order, the app you tried for a week. They still have your email address, often your name and sometimes a card. They left traces in six places, and you can check all of them in an afternoon.
1. Your current inbox
Almost every sign-up sends a welcome or confirmation email, and those emails stay in your inbox for years. In Gmail, search for subject:("welcome to" OR "confirm your email" OR "verify your email"), then sort through the senders (our full list of searches finds even more). Forgotten services often reveal themselves a second way: they still email you about privacy policy or terms of service updates long after you stopped using them.
2. Your old email addresses
If you used a Hotmail, Yahoo or school address before your current one, most of your oldest accounts are tied to it (if you are not sure which address an account uses, see how to find it). Log in to it if you still can, and run the same searches. Many providers close inactive mailboxes after a year or two, so do this before that address disappears and takes the password reset route with it.
3. Your saved passwords
Your browser has been quietly keeping a list of every site you logged in to. In Chrome, open chrome://password-manager/passwords. On an iPhone, open the Passwords app. If you use a password manager, export or browse its vault. Each entry is an account, and the list often goes back further than you expect.
4. Your "Sign in with" connections
Accounts created with one click through another service are listed in that service:
- Google: myaccount.google.com, then Security, then Your connections to third-party apps & services. Our guide on apps connected to your Google account walks through it.
- Apple: on an iPhone, Settings, then your name, then Sign-In & Security, then Sign in with Apple.
- Facebook: Settings & privacy, then Settings, then Apps and websites. To find old profiles on the networks themselves, see how to find old social media accounts.
5. Data breach records
Enter your email address on haveibeenpwned.com. Every breach it lists is a service where you had an account, including some you will not remember at all. These are also the ones to deal with first, since their data is already out. Our guide on what to do after a breach lists the steps.
6. Your bank and payment history
Old card statements, PayPal activity and app store purchase histories show every service you ever paid. A one-off payment years ago usually means an account that still exists.
What to do once you have the list
Sort each account into keep, secure or delete. Start with the ones in a breach, then the ones that still have a card on file. Our guide on deleting old online accounts covers the deletion itself, including a GDPR template for services with no delete button.
Your inbox already knows every account you have. HealthInbox reads only your Gmail headers to list them all, flags the forgotten ones and tells you what to do with each, privately and on your device.
See how HealthInbox finds them