There are many reasons why having multiple email addresses can be useful, although it does mean more passwords to remember, more logins to lose track of etc. unless you use a password manager to keep track of them.

First of all, many people have separate business and personal email addresses as using one email address for both could be very confusing. If you work or volunteer for multiple organisations then you may have multiple ‘work’ email addresses.

Your personal email address is probably used for communicating with family, friends, colleagues and numerous people you don’t really know but have some dealings with.

Plus, it’s probably used for social media accounts, online shopping, financial transactions and a myriad of other purposes.

Your personal email address is also a security measure – if you forget your password on a website then it will have a ‘click for forgotten password’ link as people frequently forget passwords and the website will send a message to your email address that lets you create a new password.

This means that if a criminal gets hold of your email password (guessing them is easy for a high percentage of people) then she can change your passwords on multiple websites where you have an account and that can even become identity theft where the criminal can take out loans in your name etc. and you have the difficult task of proving your innocence.

Using one personal email address for financial activities, shopping online, social media, email etc. means only one login and password to worry about but also means that if that one email address and password is gained by scammers then you lose control of all of those things in one go.

You can create one email address for each website etc. but perhaps a more practical answer is to have one email address per type of use e.g. one for purely personal use and one for anything financial and one for social media usage and one for anything else.

People use multiple email addresses for such as:

• An address for each business
• Each financial activity – banks, credit cards, loan companies etc.
• Social media
• Registering on sites you suspect may spam you
• Registering for downloads where you don’t want to be contacted afterwards
• Signing up on any site that will send you Marketing messages

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.