Hey Everyone!
Most jobs come with an email address, but just because it has your name on it, that doesn't mean it's yours. It's tempting to use your work email everywhere, but it's not a good idea. Here are some reasons not to use your work email as a personal mail account:
Your email address is the gateway into your personal life. You use your email address to sign into social media accounts, financial accounts and a host of other accounts that contain your personal information. Why would you sign up for online services for an account you don't own? If your work email is tied to your social accounts and financial accounts and someone gains access to your company mail account, they could use that access to gain control of your personal accounts.
Your boss can see your company emails. If your company has a reason to look through your company email, they probably can. You'd never even know. You don't want your boss knowing where you shop or what you do on your free time.
If you leave your job, it can be difficult to recover an account.
You may eventually decide to leave your current job. When that happens, you will lose access to your work email account. If you've used it to sign up for a site like Amazon, you may find that if you forget your password, you might have a difficult time recovering. Many password reset requests go to your registered email account.
Your emails may be subject to Freedom of Information Act Requests. Private individuals could have their email become part of a corporate lawsuit. If you work for the government, your emails are potentially public record. If a citizen files a FOIA request, they would possibly be able to see your private correspondence as well as what accounts you have set up online. The same goes for a private individual with a corporate email address. If the company gets sued, your email could become part of the discovery process in the lawsuit. That means that your private emails could be turned over to attorneys and become part of a public record. That could be pretty embarrassing.
Corporate email accounts are easy targets for spam and viruses.
Corporate email addresses are easy to find. They are usually listed right on the company website. Scammers and hackers gather these email addresses and try to exploit them. They try to hack your password or send phishing attempts that will expose your email account to the hacker. From there, they have access to your personal data.
Keeping a private, anonymous email address through Microsoft's Outlook.com or Google's Gmail is the best way to keep your work life and your personal life separate. Your boss can't see your private emails, hackers are less likely to come across your address randomly, and you'll keep ownership of the account
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