Some Lessons Learned from Changing My E-mail Address

Last year I decided to change my e-mail address. I’ve used the same Yahoo e-mail address since elementary school, so this was a major undertaking. I’ve done the best I can, and there are some things I learned in this process.

There’s A Lot to Change

I’ve signed up for a lot of online services over the years. While I’ve gotten most of them, there are definitely some I’ve missed. Having a password manager makes it easy to keep track of my accounts, but of course there are accounts I created before I started using one.

It’s Usually Pretty Easy

Some websites make it easy: Go to account settings, enter a new e-mail address, and click save. Wait for an e-mail at the new address, click the confirmation link, and done. That’s the “ideal” process, and thankfully a lot of the sites I use the most did make it as easy as that.

…But Sometimes It’s Hard

There are a few places where I’ve had to call customer support to change my e-mail address, only to be told that it couldn’t be changed. In fact, I don’t think there was ever an instance where I called and actually managed to change the address that way.

…And Sometimes It’s Too Easy

There were a few sites where all I had to do was go into my account settings and enter my new e-mail address. No confirmation e-mail, either to my old address or my new address. That’s a problem.

When a user changes their e-mail address, you need to send a confirmation to both the old and new addresses. The confirmation sent to the new address serves the same purpose as a confirmation for a new account: It ensures that people can’t use an e-mail address they don’t actually own. The confirmation sent to the old address gives the account holder a warning if the account is compromised.

Those sites that don’t send any confirmations at all make it too easy for attackers to exploit people’s accounts and e-mail addresses without them knowing.

Marketing E-mails Are Different

Even after I change my e-mail address, there have been a few cases where I still received marketing and newsletter e-mails at my old address. There has also been at least one case where I started receiving newsletters at my new address even after I unsubscribed on my old address. I think this is because marketing e-mails are often handled by separate systems or outside services (as opposed to account-related e-mails), and any new account e-mail address is simply sent over to those systems. But this means that it’s very difficult to change my e-mail address completely for a given company, because not many marketing e-mail services support changing e-mail addresses even if there’s an “update preferences” link.

I wish there was more coordination between the main account and marketing e-mail systems here. I shouldn’t have to go through extra steps to get marketing e-mails sent to my new address.

You’ll Have to Keep Your Old E-mail Address Anyway

Much as I’d like to completely give up my old e-mail address, I can’t. Like I mentioned earlier, there are some accounts that are still tied to that old address, so I need to keep checking it for any notifications relating to those accounts.

Not only that, I also need to check for any e-mail I receive from organizations I’ve given my address to in the past without creating an account.

Here’s an example: Last year I received a notification about a data breach from a college I have never attended or applied to. How did they get my information? Well, when I took the SAT in high school I signed up for the Student Search Service, which sent my contact information to colleges around the country for recruiting purposes. (If you took the ACT, the equivalent program there is the Educational Opportunity Service.) I got a bunch of e-mail and actual postal mail from colleges I wasn’t really interested in, but the end result is that my personal information, including my old e-mail address, is now in the databases of several colleges.

I’m sure there are other examples like this where I’ve given out my e-mail address and completely forgotten about it, and years later I’ll get some notification like this one.