I have a little bit of a cautionary tale for everybody. Recently I tried to access my Steam account in order to take part in an ongoing Steam sale. I seemed to be unable to login, so I assumed that I had forgotten my password and then asked them to send me another. I was then told that an email had been sent to an account which was not (and never had been) mine. Naturally, this was a little concerning.
So I contacted Steam and started going through the process of retrieving my account. At one point, they asked me to provide a CD key from a game I’d downloaded, telling me that I could easily retrieve it from any of my digital receipts. Unfortunately, my Steam account was tied to an old email address which I don’t ever use anymore (other than in instances where I need to provide an email address and I don’t want to.)
Another thing I needed to do, was to get a new password for my old email. I answered a security question and got on. When I did, it seemed that another person must have had control over this old email address (and used it to access my Steam) because there were emails telling me about changes to my Steam account had been made and they were all marked as read (and I had certainly never read them.)
Thankfully, I was able to regain control of my Steam account and no harm was done. I know it’s not a particularly interesting story, but it does highlight the security risk that old email accounts can pose. I’ve now set it so that nothing can be done to that email account without first entering a security code which is sent to my phone. If you have any old email addresses (perhaps which you may have created as a teen) then you might want to check that they’re completely secure. Nothing serious happened as a result of my neglecting my old account, but it could have done!
(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)
