Secret email account

[mydaughterisademon]

Posting for traffic.
I was checking my husbands phone for something and found log in details for a secret email account. Logged into it, but all that is showing is that he made the account a year ago.

How can I find out what he's been using it for? Obviously don't want to ask him at this stage as I want to gather evidence in case he's been up to anything...

Did you look in the sent items and deleted items?

Yes and nothing

Another view might be that it isn't a secret email account at all. It can't be that secret if it's hidden in plain sight on a phone you have free access to.

There are many reasons to have multiple email accounts, most of which are not nefarious.

The bigger issue in my mind is that you instantly assume that it is nefarious. Of course, it may well be, but the fact that it is the first thought indicates that there is more amiss in your relationship than the existence of an email account.

Apologies if this sounds harsh.

Not harsh.

He's got form

I have about 4 email addresses. I use them as throw away emails for sign ups I don't want to have my actual email

Maybe he made it for that?

If it's secret, he doesn't need to delete things...

Can you copy the log in to your phone so you can see if anything comes in? (Don't actually open anything, it will show up that it's been opened)

I was going to say that I know people who have a second email address that they use for junk (I use an old email address for this) but it's not empty because it gets all the spammy stuff.

Is it "secret" or do you just not know about it? I doubt my DH is aware of mine but that's because it's simply never come up rather than because I hide it. I agree with PP that the concerning thing is that you've immediately assumed it's nefarious which suggests a not completely happy situation.

I know someone who set up a secret email account so family members could plan a surprise for his wife's birthday.

Do you have any reason to suspect him of anything?

I have a separate email account that I use to login to games. I set it up specifically for that purpose, because my main email has my name in it and I never use my real name online.

I've never told DH about it because it's irrelevant to anything and he wouldn't be the tiniest bit interested!

I've got a few email addresses for different purposes. Anything that is going to give me a 30% discount and then likely to spam me forever gets one, serious correspondence gets another. I've been known to open a Hotmail account for a single website. Loads I've stopped using.

My husband doesn't know about any of them because they're utterly trivial but I guess he might see them as "secret"

Have you asked him?

I have at least 2 email accounts my husband doesn't know about. 1 for junk stuff where I have to use an email to sign up but don't want the subsequent spam clogging my main email, and another for social media sign ups so it's not linked to my name. No nefarious reasons, and wouldn't care if he knew about either, or even if he looked at either. I just haven't told him because it's not really anything to tell.

I have a few email addresses, I don't want to use the same one on my bank accounts as Mumsnet, various shopping sites and other random things that require an email address, I wouldn't want to think that my DH thought these were secret email addresses as he probably doesn't know they exist.

I also think you can set it to empty every X amount of days

So if it is a throw away email that just gets spam then it might be set to delete once a week because he doesn't need the spam filling his email/phone

I would put an automatic forward rule on it…it doesn’t show it’s been forwarded..

Ok I got down to the bottom of it, it was for YouTube! How embarrassing

I’ve got an unused gmail and an unused BT account because for some site you have to use them to log in.

I have a few email addresses for various things, it's not a secret just not first thing to discuss, there are more important things.

If DP has another email account I wouldn't ask or care, imo the fact that you defaulted to the worst suggests you either have reasons to doubt him or you are insecure, either of which you should address / talk about imo

Years ago I caught him on a dating site. It was about 10 years ago, we've moved on. I think I really need to get over this! He's done nothing to make me suspicious since, my mind just defaults to the worst.

Thanks for all the comments, I think I need to work on my trust issues