Ready Kids › Online Ready › Badge 1 › Lesson 1.3
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The account you forgot
List every account you have ever made and lock or delete the ones you no longer use.
1Watch
Nine-year-old you
The old account
A kid searches her own name and scrolls. A profile she made at nine comes up: full name, school, photos of the house, a bio she does not remember writing. The cursor stops on a photo of her bedroom window.
20 secondsEverybody has one. Most people have three.
2The idea
Old accounts do not close themselves
You stopped using it. It did not stop existing. The photo of your house, the school in your bio, the birthday you typed in: all still there, all still searchable, protected by a password you made when you were nine.
The account is not the problem. Not knowing it is there is the problem. An account you know about can be locked in two minutes. An account you have forgotten is a door you left open in a house you moved out of.
3The idea
The sweep, in five steps
1. Find them. Search your email for the word welcome. Every account you ever made sent one. Then old tablets, consoles, school logins, a parent’s email.
2. Log in, or reset the password.
3. Change it to a long new one.
4. Take your school, street and birthday out of the bio.
5. Delete it through Settings, or lock it to private.
Control first, then decide. Deleting photos from an account you cannot log into is not possible, and leaving it open is the same as leaving the photos up. Get the password, then choose.
4The idea
Watch it work once
Sam searches her email for welcome. Fourteen results. One is a drawing app she used at nine. She goes to the site, resets the password (the old one was her cat’s name), and logs in. Full name. School. A photo of her bedroom window with the street visible below it. Four years online.
She takes the school out of the bio, then finds Delete Account under Settings and does it. Confirmation email. Seven minutes, start to finish. Thirteen accounts left on the list, and now she knows they exist, which is most of the job.
5Look
Where they hide
Five places an old account lives
An old tablet in a drawer, a games console, a school laptop login screen, an email inbox full of old welcome messages, and an app-store purchase history.
The best trick is your email. Search it for the word welcome. Every account you ever made sent one.
6Decide
You find an old account with a weak password and photos of your house. First move?
Pick one to carry on.
7Build it
The sweep list
Account sweep
Tick through the places an old account hides: games, old phones, school logins, a parent's email, apps you deleted but never closed. Each tick adds a row to your own list to check tonight.
The list is the point. You will find one you had forgotten. That is normal.
8Find them
Which of these are worth doing to an account you no longer use?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 3.
9Say it
The one to ask a parent
Say it at the table, like it is nothing
“Can you check your email for accounts you made for me?”
Half the accounts you had before you were ten were made on a parent’s email. They have forgotten them too.
10Do it
Before you leave this page
Search your email for the word welcome. Pick one account you had forgotten. Log in tonight and either delete it or make it private with a new password.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
An account you forgot is still yours. Find it before someone else does.
Take the Badge ChallengeBadge 1 · Your Footprint
1.1What a photo tells a stranger1.2Location, on and off1.3The account you forgot★Badge Challenge