Scan your email inbox for hidden threats with this nifty tool
It can be easy to forget that your inbox often contains a treasure trove of account details and passwords, but if a hacker gains access it can mean trouble.
Luckily password manager Dashlane has a helpful online tool called Inbox Scan that will scour your inbox for these details so you can see what sensitive information is sitting in your emails - and it only takes a minute.
First you'll need to head on over to the Dashlane Inbox Scan website by clicking here.
Next, you'll need to select "Scan my inbox" button, select which email account you'll be using, and authorize Dashlane with one-time access to inspect your inbox - don't worry, Dashlane is only granted temporary, read-only access to your email. Inbox Scan works with Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL email accounts.
The scan itself only takes a few seconds.
Once its finished scanning your inbox, Dashlane will then show you a collection of bubbles that represent every accounts and service with information stored in your email. The larger the bubble, the more important the account is - and if the bubble is red that means Dashlane found a plain-text password for that account as well.
It's especially important to pay attention to these red bubbles. If someone were to hack into your email, they'd also gain access to additional accounts and services by using any plain-text passwords found in your emails.
Once you've looked that over, you can click on the "Security Analysis" button for a more detailed summary page that tells you how many online accounts have information stored in your inbox, whether any of those companies or services have suffered a breach in the past, and your "favorite" passwords that you use for too many different sites (pro tip: Don't do that).
Of course, Dashlane is hoping that you'll also choose to manage your passwords more securely with its Dashlane Password Manager app, but there's no charge for using Inbox Scan either way.
Dashlane also lets you download a full report in PDF form for a deeper dive into what Inbox Scan discovered, and it's a great way to see exactly which passwords or account details are stored in your email. If you download the full report, you should delete it once you're finished looking it over since it summarizes some of your most important account information and details.
"We built Inbox Scan as a cool educational tool to make people realize how easy it was to get sensitive information from their inbox," Dashlane co-founder Alexis Fogel wrote over on Product Hunt. "In most cases, we are able in one click to show you what is your favorite password + a list of all websites you have created an accounts on (which is a gold mine for hackers)."
Convinced it's a good idea to give your inbox a scan? You can get started by clicking here.