Leaving job, work email registered on everything

Big mistake. Huge. I am surprised that it wasn't in your contract that you couldn't use your email for private purposes. All you can do is be very methodical about this and as each email comes in, change it to your private one. Keep a spreadsheet so you can keep sorting it into alphabetical order so you can keep track of what has been done.

I have 3 email addresses. I have my business one, a personal one for medical appointments and DD's school/college, and one for shopping. It makes life a lot easier as it keeps the important stuff in one place.

We have only ever once allowed an ex employee to keep their work number.

it was a very long standing employee who was retiring & who was going to do the odd freelance day for us.

our phone contracts are for a specific length of time. An employee tragically died and we still had to pay for his number until the contract renewal.

the number would generally be passed onto the replacement employee so that customers have continuity.

email addresses are not de-activated for approx 6-12 months but we check them regularly and put a forward on. In case of ongoing contracts we may need to check a previous email trail.

Yes. I have more than one email address. I use my main one for important stuff - banking, HMRC, NHS etc and the other one for orders, travel bookings etc.

Last Pass had a HUGE data breach a couple of years back.

I'd seriously recommend you switch to a browser based password manager.

OP - if you've used your browser, you can go into settings and see which sites you've got passwords for.

Get your own email and start swapping everything across.

I suggested it before but it would be a really good idea to set up several new email addresses so that you can keep some more exclusive than others. A separate one that you only use for banking is a good idea.

Re: keeping work mobile number might be possible, it might not. ask your employer. Will depend on type of job and circumstances. Eg if in a client facing role they will never allow it.

very poor judgement and very unprofessional to use work email in that way. I guess you’ll have to work out which websites and change them.

A previous marketing director was put on garden leave for a year to prevent this from happening.

I’m surprised you were allowed to do this. Depends where you are I suppose, but this wasn’t allowed at my work.

Just methodically make a list of all the obvious ones and then have a quiet think about others you might need and then get them all redirected.

Make a list - sort it out and don't repeat it. Many organisations now state work email should just be for work and not personal use.

It depends on what you're contact says about termination. Restrictions on poaching clients (and staff) are legally enforceable and people have been successfully sued and ordered to pay damages,

And yet, as I have said, it’s done quite often despite all the people saying it can’t be done.

There is little to stop anyone leaving a company taking details of their contacts with them. A customer facing person can then quite easily make contact with previous customers whether they have the same number or not. Preventing them keeping the same number isn’t a failsafe solution at all.

My very large corporate firm lets you keep your number. There’s a policy for it and you just fill out a form and they let you transfer the number to another contract.

I wouldn't have used the work email for so many things like facebook etc. I only used mine once when I had to create a new broadband account, and it wouldn't accept the other one because it was the same, so I used my work email, but changed it as soon as possible. You'll have to just go through the sites and change it I'm afraid.

Possibly not although pre-smart phone it was more common. Nevertheless an out of office would be a very odd thing to do.

The disadvantages are huge for a commercial organisation, as has been pointed out, the last thing you want is a sales enquiry going to a rival firm, or an urgent service request to go to the wrong place. Sending and receiving emails is not a particular problem, just inconvenient to the OP now, and her emails weren't secure, even deleted ones can be retrieved from the email server. I know my work number was diverted to my successor when I retired and then after a few months reallocated, they wanted the sim back but not the phone, but it was 3 years old with a knackered battery.

What I find astonishing is that at no point during the OP's employment with this company did it occur to her that using her employer's email address was inappropriate and a security risk.

Firstly because it's pointless, the email account will probably be deactivated shortly after the OP leaves.

Secondly - depending on what is in her contract of employment - this is potentially flagging up breach of use.

I suggest you update the email address on the personal (web) accounts to your personal email account asap, and phone numbers

If you have been using a password manager it will be considerably easier, but there's no automated way to do it.

You might also want to consider owning your own domain name, as it will mean you'll always have control over it, and from my experience seems to be less targeted for scams and spam.

Not very professional to use a work email for personal emails though is it ???

You need to make a list and work through all their websites to change your phone number and email address to personal ones. Start with the most important such as banks and finances, then utilities, broadband, insurance, DVLA/car insurance, NHS, etc., then work down to internet shopping starting with the most used and then onto the lesser used retailers.

Banks and governmental bodies, NHS/GP and then utilities etc are the most important as you'll usually need to get a code pinged to your registered mobile number when you change your email address or try to change phone number, as they tend to ping a code to your current (old) email or phone to check it's you. So you need both old and new emails/phones working at the same time to change things via their websites.

Once you've lost access to your work phone/email, you'll have a much harder job of changing things as you'll need to go through security etc on the phone and banks etc may want to post new login details to your registered home address. (I hope you've not moved as well recently as if you have and not registered your new home address with everyone, then that's going to be even more problematic if you change email and mobile at the same time!!).

It's all going to take time. These things do. And it'll be frustrating. That's why you need to make a list and start with the most important first. It's vital you change details with banks and governmental bodies and NHS/GP. Not so important with online retailers as you can just set up a new account and let the old details be archived. So concentrate on what's important.

@Bleepbleepbleepman does your contract allow you to use your work email and number for personal things???? My DH is not allowed to do this, and neither was I in my previous engineering job.

You can use your phone to find out which passwords you have stored, then you will have to go to each website, login, then change your email and phone number to a personal one.

Or you could ask work very nicely if you could port the phone number, but most companies would not be keen on doing this. And if you're changing the email address anyway you might as well change your number too.

go through your spam and make sure you catch all the sites you're registered to, do all the obvious ones that you use a lot, and change your login details.

And in future don't be so daft

But the disadvantages are also pretty small. It’s definitely done.