Passwords are the unfinished business of Internet users. We have all had the same problem. After carefully picking the perfect password with capital letters, numbers, special characters and which is finally long enough, we have to sing up for another service. Whether it is to open bank account, a new profile on Instagram or to access our telephone bills via the Web we have to remember yet another password.
Although some platforms help us with this task by sending us a password to enable us to enter the account and which can be modified later, we end up learning it by heart instead of changing it.
That email with our password is then forgotten and ends up at the bottom of our inbox.
We already warned you when more than five million Gmail passwords were leaked on a file and security experts have demonstrated with various safety studies that this is an upward trend. If we look back to that forgotten email among other hundreds, you can figure out that its very existence poses a risk, because its content is at the mercy of the cybercriminals who are always ready to steal the information.
If you, like most people, suffer from ‘digital Diogenes syndrome’ it will be difficult to rescue all those emails with sensitive information and to prevent their theft. And to remember all the online services you have signed up for and for which you have kept the original password.
Whatever the case we recommend a useful and simple option called Scan Inbox. A tool which detects forgotten private information in your inbox and deletes it permanently. You don’t even have to download the service. It is available ‘online’.
The program works in Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or AOL and searches for and locates sensitive information such as automated emails with passwords or bank account numbers which you think are secure.
To use this tool you only have to indicate your mail server and it will automatically access and scan your email. Dashlane, the company owning the service, ensures that this intrusion is temporary and no personal information is stored.
Once the analysis is executed and completed, Inbox Scan gives you a full report on the inbox’s ‘health’ with regard to security. The report includes details like the number of passwords and the number of new accounts created, those which might have been affected by a security breach and which passwords have been reused.
All the information is presented in a visual way: a lower bar indicates the time and above it a series of bubbles arranged chronologically. Each of these represents one of the accounts you have created. The bigger the bubble the more important it is, and the color red indicates whether this tool has found a password associated with the account in question.
If the display is not enough for you and you wish to study the report in depth you can download it in PDF. From there on, you just have to change the compromised passwords and delete all the sensitive emails.
An alternative for you to store your passwords safely
If you wish to have all your passwords stored in one place, you can use the password manager of our antivirus software Panda Global Protection.
If you use this you will only have to remember one master password to access all your Web services. In this way, you will never forget another password again!
Panda Security specializes in the development of endpoint security products and is part of the WatchGuard portfolio of IT security solutions. Initially focused on the development of antivirus software, the company has since expanded its line of business to advanced cyber-security services with technology for preventing cyber-crime.
