Lifestyle changes

At the end of last year I got a new mobile phone and changed phone number at the same time. I'd deferred changing phone numbers for as long as possible since I expected it to be a massive hassle. It actually wasn't too painful; I don't use the phone that often and there weren't too many people who new my old number.

Of course there might be a few people that still have my old phone number (mental note: check whether the girls' school has my new phone number). But what I don't know people don't know won't hurt me, right? Or at least, I won't know that I don't know it hurts me.

So that bodes well for my next lifestyle change, then.

This week I have to move my email address. Move my email address? It can't be that hard can it? It's kinda like moving house, but with fewer vans and boxes.

This is an email address that I have been using for the last, ooh, more than ten years. Turns out it's a lot more personal than a phone number. Whilst I've been using my goodliffe.net domain as my main contact email address for some time now, the threat of an old email address actually disappearing (cthree.org is moving mail provision service and rationalising their addresses in the process) is a sobering thought.

When I consider how many services I've subscribed to with that address, how much software I've registered using that as a contact address, and how many products and suppliers might contact me using that address, I realise that if the old address suddenly goes poof! I'll be in a bit of bother.

So what online malarkey has my email address? Off hand I can think of:

• Banks and credit cards.
• Several professional organisations.
• Service providers like electricity/gas and my ISP.
  
• eBay.
• PayPal.
• Amazon.
• Social networking places like: Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, etc.
• Skype and MSN-ny services.
  
• Many other shops (how can I remember them all?)
  
• My internet domain registrations and DNS services.
• Various product subscriptions.
• My software registrations.
• My book publishers.
  
• My friends.

And I'm sure I'm missing a load of stuff there. Frustratingly, if the old address is disabled then it's much harder to move some of these; many services require access to the old address in order to change to a new address.

I hope that I remember everything. And I'm left wishing there was a decent way to track who has your contact details.

Bootnote: if you have my old cthree.org email address in your address book then please update it to my new goodliffe.net address. You can probably guess it! Normal service will be resumed shortly.