Most people, over the years, accumulate accounts. A profile on a service used briefly, a registration made for a single purpose, a forum joined and forgotten, an early attempt at something later abandoned. Each was created with a particular need in mind, served it, and then fell out of use. The natural assumption is that what is no longer used no longer matters.

It is not a safe assumption. A dormant account is not an absent one. It continues to exist on the service that holds it. It continues to hold whatever was placed in it: a name, an email address, a date, perhaps a photograph, perhaps opinions or details shared at the time and long forgotten. And it continues to be findable by anyone who looks in the right place.

Old accounts are revealing in a particular way. They were often created with less care than a person would use now. They may carry an early version of a name, or a handle later reused elsewhere, or an email address that ties back to the person directly. They capture someone as they were at a particular time, and that earlier self is sometimes more candid, or simply more traceable, than the present one.

They also serve as connectors. A username chosen years ago and used again since links one account to another. An email address used to register several services binds them into a set. A single dormant account, once found, can be the thread that leads to a great deal else.

The remedy is not to live without ever having had such accounts, which is impossible. It is to know they exist. An honest account of a person's exposure includes not only what they maintain today but what they left behind years ago and have not thought about since, because the record has not forgotten it, even if the person has.