Find forgotten online accounts from old signup emails with Claude Cowork and other AI agents

Posted

Oct 8, 2026 by Ben Patterson (PCWorld)

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Last checked

Oct 22, 2026

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Method:

How we verify

Evidence: Article or interviewA newsletter, journalist or interview account of what happened.

Outcome

Ben Patterson wanted to know how many forgotten accounts were left over from years of testing products. For PCWorld, Patterson gave a prompt to Claude Cowork, Gemini Spark, Meta's Muse and a ChatGPT Dot: search the last 5 years of email for welcome, verification and password-reset messages, build a spreadsheet of services with first and last email dates, whether the service is on haveibeenpwned.com's list of breached sites, and its official account-deletion link, with the most dormant at the top, and don't sign in, reset passwords or contact anyone. All four returned spreadsheets in five minutes to half an hour; each found at least 50 accounts, and the ChatGPT Dot found 73. Patterson found accounts they'd forgotten, such as a Bowers & Wilkins account from 2022. About half the deletion links came back 'not found' or pointed to privacy FAQs.

AI tools

Claude Cowork, Gemini Spark, Muse, ChatGPT Dots

Exact prompt as published in the source.

What the prompt labels mean

Search my email from the last 5 years for signs that I created an account somewhere — welcome emails, “verify your email” or “confirm your account” messages, and password-reset emails. Build a new spreadsheet (a Google Sheet if you can) with one row per service: service name, website, date of the earliest signup email, date of the most recent email from them, and whether the service appears on haveibeenpwned.com’s public list of breached websites (with the breach year). For each service, find its official account-deletion page and add the link; if you can’t find one, write “not found” — don’t guess. Put services I haven’t heard from in 2+ years at the top. Don’t sign in anywhere, request password resets, type my email address into any website, delete anything, or contact anyone.

Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to.

Goal: Find the online accounts I've forgotten about, using signup emails in my inbox, so I can delete the ones I don't need.

Fill in before running:
- Email account to search: [ACCOUNT]
- How many years back to look: [YEARS]
- Where to put the spreadsheet: [GOOGLE SHEETS OR OTHER]

Rules:
- Look for welcome, 'verify your email', 'confirm your account' and password-reset emails.
- One row per service: name, website, earliest signup email date, most recent email date, and whether it's on a public list of breached sites (with the year).
- Add each service's official account-deletion page; write 'not found' rather than guess.
- Put services I haven't heard from in 2+ years at the top.
- Don't sign in anywhere, request password resets, type my email address into any website, delete anything or contact anyone.
- Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify.
- Mark which deletion links you actually opened and confirmed are official, and which you couldn't find.

Output: A spreadsheet of my accounts, most dormant first, with deletion links where they exist.

You'll know it worked when: I can see every account the emails point to and how to delete the ones I don't want.

Before you finish: re-read my goal and constraints, check your answer against each one, and list anything you assumed or couldn't confirm.

Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to.

Goal: Find the online accounts I've forgotten about, using signup emails in my inbox, so I can delete the ones I don't need.

Fill in before running:
- Email account to search: [ACCOUNT]
- How many years back to look: [YEARS]
- Where to put the spreadsheet: [GOOGLE SHEETS OR OTHER]

Rules:
- Look for welcome, 'verify your email', 'confirm your account' and password-reset emails.
- One row per service: name, website, earliest signup email date, most recent email date, and whether it's on a public list of breached sites (with the year).
- Add each service's official account-deletion page; write 'not found' rather than guess.
- Put services I haven't heard from in 2+ years at the top.
- Don't sign in anywhere, request password resets, type my email address into any website, delete anything or contact anyone.
- Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify.
- Mark which deletion links you actually opened and confirmed are official, and which you couldn't find.

Output: A spreadsheet of my accounts, most dormant first, with deletion links where they exist.

You'll know it worked when: I can see every account the emails point to and how to delete the ones I don't want.

Before you finish: re-read my goal and constraints, check your answer against each one, and list anything you assumed or couldn't confirm.

Source

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3253645/i-used-claude-to-find-the-online-accounts-id-forgotten-about.html