How old accounts and usernames give you away

Old accounts matter because they’re often the bridge between two parts of your life. A forum profile from years ago might show your real first name next to a username you still use today. Once someone sees that, everything else under that username points back to you.

Why old accounts are a problem

When you signed up for things years ago, you probably weren’t thinking about privacy. You used your real name, your hometown, a photo of yourself, your personal email. Those accounts are still there, and many are still public, even if you haven’t logged in for years.

The usual problems:

• A real name next to a username. This is the big one. It links your handle to your identity.
• A city, school or workplace in a bio or profile field.
• A profile photo that also appears on accounts you’d rather keep separate.
• Links to your other accounts, which connect them all together.
• Old posts that mention where you live, your kids’ names or your daily routine.

The username problem

If you’ve used the same username on lots of sites, they’re all linked to each other. There are free tools that check a username across hundreds of sites in seconds, and anyone can use them. If even one of those profiles has your real name or city, the rest are tied to you as well.

This matters most if you have a public identity you want to keep apart from your private life, like a gaming handle, a stream name or a pen name.

How to find your old accounts

1. Search your inbox. Look for “welcome”, “verify your email”, “confirm your account” and “reset your password” in every email account you’ve used, especially old ones. Each result is a site you signed up for.
2. Check your password manager or browser, which may have saved logins for sites you’ve forgotten.
3. Search your usernames in quotes on a search engine, and try them on the big sites directly.
4. Check breaches. Have I Been Pwned shows which breached sites your email was used on, which often turns up accounts you forgot about.
5. Look at “Sign in with Google” or “Sign in with Apple” in your account settings. Both list the apps and sites you’ve used them with.

What to do with each one

For each account, decide whether you still want it:

• You don’t need it: delete it. Look for “close account” or “delete account” in the settings. Some sites hide this, and a search for “delete [site name] account” usually finds the steps.
• You want to keep it: edit the profile. Take out your real name, city and photo, and remove links to your other accounts. Consider changing the username if the site lets you.
• You can’t get in: try a password reset. If the email is gone too, most sites have a support form for account removal.

Deleting an account doesn’t always remove copies of it. Search engines can keep showing an old page for a while, and archive sites may have saved a copy. If an old page still shows up in search results after the account is gone, Google has a tool for asking it to refresh outdated results.

Going forward

• Use a different username for anything you want to keep separate.
• Leave out your real name, city and photo where a site doesn’t need them.
• Use a separate email address for sign-ups you don’t care much about.

How Oko helps

Oko’s report checks which sites still have an account for your email, and where your usernames are in use. For each account, it says what the profile shows and whether it’s part of a route back to you, and tells you whether to close it or change what’s on it. Adding your past names and usernames when you set up your report helps it find more.