There are so many accounts to manage nowadays: bank accounts, utility accounts, social media accounts, online store accounts… the list goes on and on. Having an account management strategy will make it easier to remember all the accounts you have and how to log in. This can especially come in handy on the rare occasions you have to do mass updates for your contact info, such after an address change or name change. An account management strategy can also help you securely share accounts and passwords with other people.
Identity Management
The first area of digital account management is “identity management”, which means deciding which identities you’d like to use online. Each identity is unique to you and tells others how to contact you. Examples include email address, phone number, and social media handle. Your identity is primarily based off email address when using online services and accounts. If you have three email addresses then you have three possible identities you can assume online.
Creating new identities
There are a couple good use cases where it’s worth it for you to create a new email address, phone number, social media account, or other type of contact identity.
The first use case is if you have a specific purpose for the identity. For example, many folks who are employed have a special email for work. Whether you’re self-employed or employed with a company, it’s helpful to have a separation between business emails and personal emails. Another example is having a “throwaway” email for online shopping and non-secure websites. A throwaway email prevents your main personal email from becoming cluttered with promotional content and spam.
The second use case is for household management. Unfortunately many household services like utility companies don’t have a concept of a household contact. They can only store one phone number and email on file. This puts the responsibility of managing bills and messages on one person. Creating a shared email account can help to alleviate the issue and allow a more equitable share of household management.
Password Management
Password management is another critical aspect of account management. Password guidance changes every so often as technology evolves, but one thing you can do to make your life easier is adopt a password strategy.
Category-Based Passwords
One option to simplify your password management is to consolidate passwords of similar categories. Categories can include financial institutions, email, social media, healthcare, online shopping, entertainment, and more. Think about what information someone could steal if they got into that account, and only use the same password between accounts of similar exposure risk. This approach can reduce the number of passwords to remember down to 3-10, depending on the number of high-exposure accounts you have.
For example, you could use the same password for all your streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. If someone stole your Netflix account then they would see your full name, billing address, and possibly the last four digits of your credit card number. However there’s not much they could actually do to abuse your account other than watch some content for free on your dime. They might increase your subscription fee by moving you to a higher tier, but ultimately it’s a service you were already using and paying on a regular basis.
A higher risk level than streaming services are shopping services like Amazon. If you store a payment instrument on file and someone got into your Amazon account then they could order items to their own address. This could land you with a substantial bill and nothing to show for it.
The most serious exposure level would be your email. Your email is how you can reset virtually any password for your other accounts. If a thief got into your email then they could use the “Forgot Password” option to get into your banks, private cloud storage, and other sensitive accounts. It’s vitally important to use a unique password for each of your email addresses. Be sure to also use 2-Factor authentication whenever available.
| Exposure Level | Examples | Guidance |
| Highest | Use a strong, unique passphrase for each email address. NEVER use an email password as a password for anything else. | |
| High | Financial institutions, Cloud storage | Use a strong, unique passphrase for each account. If you do want to simplify then you could create variations of similar passphrases that are easy to remember. For example: “Iwant2Retireby~65withFidelity” vs “Iwant2Retireby~65withVangard” |
| Medium | Online shopping, Social Media | If you consolidate passwords then only do so between similar services. For example, have a social media password that is different from your online shopping password. |
| Low | Entertainment | You could consolidate and use the same password across all low-risk accounts. Be sure not to use this password for any of your more important accounts. |
Password manager
The easiest solution to password management is to use a password manager service. They can help you store your passwords, generate new passwords, and log in automatically. You only need to remember one main password to get into your password manager, and that’s it! The danger of this approach is that it’s very hard to get back into your password manager if you forget the main password.
Password managers can also help you securely share certain passwords with others. For example, my household uses a shared “vault” that has the Wi-Fi password, streaming and utility logins, and other shared household accounts.
Technology evolves constantly, so it’s best to read reviews on password managers directly from experts. PCMag has a good list of the top password managers along with a list of pros and cons for each one.
I hope you learned something new that will help you on your account management journey!
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