Some time ago, you set up an email account, and you have been using it for ages. To make things easy,
you set your phone to log into the email account automatically -who wants to enter the password all the time. That’s fine, sort of.
BUT, and this is a big BUT, did you set up a recovery method? What will happen if you drop your phone in the water, if you accidentally run over it or just loose it? Can you log into your email account on the new phone? You have long forgotten the password you used, and when clicking this great ‘forgotten password?’ link, it wants to make sure you are who you say you are: by sending a code to your email address (which you cannot access at the moment); if you haven’t given the email provider another way to contact you and confirm it is you, you might be locked out of your email account for ever. And not even your email provider can recover it for you.
In your email settings there will be a ‘Recovery options’ entry; make sure you find this now and check
that you provided your phone number or another email address (with a password that you have
hopefully engraved onto your memory). And then make sure you keep this information up-to-date. Now you can happily forget your email password, and you will be able to regain access to your emails by using these recovery options.
Of course, another way to never forget your passwords (and create very secure ones on the fly) is to use
a password manager. A small program that keeps track of all your passwords for every account and every website and all you have to remember is the one Master Password that allows you access to this
program. But that is a subject for another article
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