Stephanie Ta in an interview with Roberto Popolizio from Website Planet
February 24, 2025
Roberto asked Stephanie what orphaned user accounts are all about and why they pose a major cyber threat.
There are fundamental flaws in internet services that are designed to manage a large number of user accounts. For example, many self-service functions are poorly designed. They are actually intended to support the user and automatically simplify the handling of their own account. The user experience is an important aspect here.
Human behavior also plays a major role, because sometimes it is easier to create a new account than to reset the password because you have simply forgotten it.
These faulty processes lead to more and more accounts being created, over which companies and providers lose control. Pishing and other hacking methods make it easy for cyber criminals to hijack these user accounts and misuse them for their own purposes.
For website operators, especially the readers of Website Planet, it is important to know that unused accounts represent a major cyber risk for them and their users.
You can read the whole interview on Website Planet:
https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/syntlogo-interview/
Interested? – Follow me for more cyber tips on LinkedIn and read my article on “Cyber Security Best Practices: Inactive Accounts” here on our IAM blog.
Another interview on the topic: “Changing passwords regularly is a cyber risk” can be found here: https://www.safetydetectives.com/blog/syntlogo-interview/
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About Website Planet: Website Planet was founded in 2013 by web developers to support people or companies online who want to set up, promote or expand a web presence, in short a website. Website Planet is independent and helps to decide between different content management systems (CMS). Readers will find comparisons and assistance to help them decide for themselves what the right way to create a website is for them.
That was: Stephanie’s insights for the readers of Website Planet.