Why Personal Cybersecurity Practices Begin with Digital Decluttering

When’s the last time you cleaned out your digital closet? If you’re like most people, the answer is somewhere between “never” and “what is a digital closet?” We live in a world of seemingly infinite cloud storage, and as a result, we've become digital hoarders—holding onto thousands of old emails, documents, accounts, and files that haven’t been touched in years. But here’s the hard truth: every piece of old data you’re holding onto is a potential security risk. Forgotten shopping accounts from 2016, saved scans of your ID, folders filled with personal notes and passwords—each one is a door that a hacker could walk through. This is where strong personal cybersecurity practices come in, and one of the most underrated strategies is digital decluttering. Email is Not a File Storage System Many people treat their inbox like a storage unit. It’s not. Email was built for communication, not long-term document storage. Old emails often contain sensitive data—tax documents, passwords, fami...