Leaving job, work email registered on everything

[Bleepbleepbleepman]

Any tips??! Please
I’m likely leaving my longstanding job for a new one in the next few weeks
Historically (and stupidly) I’ve registered literally everything I’ve signed up for to my work email and phone number so I have easy access on my laptop and phone.
has anyone been in a similar situation and managed to navigate changing this smoothly?

you are being unreasonable - you’ve got a nightmare ahead sorting this

you are not being unreasonable - there’s a way to sort this

I am astounded at the naivety and lack of IT literacy shown on this thread, and how many companies seem to have lax IT security.

The company I work for blocked access to social media platforms, eBay, Amazon etc many years ago, not that it matters these days as everyone just uses their phone.

Do people really not understand how important it is to not use public Wi-Fi (that includes the workplace) when making financial transactions or accessing personal and confidential data?

It's no wonder that so many people get their Facebook accounts hacked.

Back in the day people did use their work email addresses for things. The only reason I don't/didn't is because I've moved jobs quite frequently, so I used my personal email.

I know one of my colleagues has used his work email for decades! However, he's one of the bosses. Hopefully not for things like banking but definitely for things like booking flights.

This is a bit of a stretch 😂
I haven’t even left yet and don’t plan on stealing a phone!!

Thanks again everyone, loads of very helpful and supportive comments here.
Ive changed quite a few accounts over to my new account mail address already. Looking to get a personal phone over the next couple of weeks, I’ve got a long notice period to work!

Ryanair doesn't let you change so you have to set up a new account. Others can be the same and you will lose any loyalty.

It really isn't. It's just something that needs sorting. It was quite common to do this 10 to 20 years ago when people didn't have their own mobile access and in the scheme of dumb things it is no where near 'one of the dumbest things anyone has ever done' I can promise you that.

My employer is fine with people taking their work number with them.....

Head of IT here. I wouldn't encourage it, but for longstanding staff, I'd probably let them take the phone number.
Email is trickier. Most sites won't let you change your address. Go to each site and see if you can. If you can't, shut the account down. Once you leave, you have no control over the email and they may well give someone access to check for new messages

Don't do this going forward.
In jobs I have had, the email account will be quickly deleted by the account admin once you have left. If they are slow about doing this, there are GDPR and security implications that they should be well aware of, so your address will disappear anyway.
If your payslips and P60 etc are done through an online system where you log in to download, also make very sure you have done this while you are still on the books, as this too will not keep going. Pension information can be important for a long time and only really provable by these documents. Been there myself.

It was quite common to do this 10 to 20 years ago when people didn't have their own mobile access

I'm surprised. Would they not have had a PC or laptop at home instead?
I have always had my own email address even when we were on dial up internet access before broadband.

My Dh has this issue - however, he was allowed to keep his phone number

In 2000 55 percent of homes had access to the Internet. It was up to 75 perc by 2010 in UK. If you have been in a job for 25 plus years you could easily had no home access for first 10 years. I set up my first home email 6 years after starting my current job. Never had a home computer separate from work laptop which I got in 2003. The changes have been dramatic.

Echoing posters above, I’d not bring this to your employers attention. It’s not a huge deal if you’ve signed up for a say, a clothing retailer mailing list, using their email- just unsubscribe and nobody will ever be any the wiser.

It’s more of a problem around social media and credit checking, as theoretically both of those could open up your employer to liability, by virtue of you using their email address.

I use my work email for loads of things to but realised it probably wasn’t a good idea and so am slowly moving everything over.

I’m in the same position with a lot of my online accounts registered to my work email. As my job could go at any time I have recently started working through as I spot them and changing them to my personal email. It will take forever and I’m sure I’ll miss some but will get there in the end. Good luck

Just to clarify, DW uses her work email address, she doesn’t actually access her bank details etc at work, just don’t know why she hasn’t set up one of her own, despite being told by me and her DS about internet security( he worked for a very IT conscious large accountancy firm)

Do you mean your DW uses her work email address as the login for banking? If so, this should be changed as the emails can be read and intercepted by anyone with access in IT or anyone the company has outsourced that access to eg. 3rd party support services. You would have no way of knowing that these emails have been accessed. I have access to thousands of work mailboxes in my IT job. The passwords could easily be changed and your DW would be locked out of the account. If any fraud were to occur then you may not be covered as it’s not a “personal” email account that only you have access to, which is not advised.

Many many years ago a very techy “friend” of mine said to me they would host my email domain which was my then surname so my emails were for example [email protected] I didn’t give it much thought and it was free rather than paying hosting charges. My emails came into my mailbox as unread like normal. It was only years later when I became an IT professional myself I realised they had the ability to read every single email I sent and received on their own computers and I had no idea (made sense how they knew personal things about me at the time though).

The naivety on this thread is worrying, isn't it.

Very much so, I think people may think that because a new email in their inbox is “unread” no one else has seen it or it would change to “read” when that only applies to the version of it they are seeing and the email exists elsewhere on the mail server etc. Or they think because the email is their name then it’s “personal” and can only been viewed by them.

My company just wouldn’t allow it…it would be misuse of company email / internet policies.

I work in a heavily regulated sector and I’d still say it’s pretty normal to have a conversation about keeping at least your number if not your handset too. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask if you can or what their policy is on it.

My company wouldn't either. We have an IT team who are shit hot on this kind of thing. We are always having to do online courses about IT security.

They even send us fake spam emails to make sure we are in the ball and can spot them and report them as phishing emails.

Just change everything to a new account while you still have access

No, it’s not her log in at all, she put it down as her correspondence email initially,,since changed after I found out,I made her change how she logs in, she uses fingerprint/facial recognition and cannot use those on her work computer,it’s definitely not her log in. I actively discourage her from accessing any financial stuff on any work IT equipment I’d agree that too many people are too naive about internet security.

Well it doesn't really sell the UK as a high tech workforce, certainly.

Quoting my earlier post to add to it: the most insurmountable thing that was a feature of every account that had been started up by another person (a predecessor) was 2-factor authentication, where an automated checker with a lifespan of 10 mins or so will be sent to a mobile or to an email address. Even when, technically, the administrator role had been transferred. If your work email address is erased, this will send you to the brink of insanity because only half of any verification process will be possible, and mostly, a person you may be able to get through to (if it's not a chatbot) will not be able to influence it in any way.