This piece walks through a practical digital spring cleaning with tips from cybersecurity voices including Michael Sherwood at Malwarebytes and Chad Thunberg at Yubico, and it covers freeing storage, inbox cleanup, dormant accounts, app and system updates, social audits, third-party access, and modern logins like passkeys.
Start by clearing out the bulky files that slow phones and laptops down. Photos and videos pile up faster than we think, and low storage can stop important operating system updates in their tracks. Copy what you want to keep to an external drive or a cloud service, then remove the local copies to give your device breathing room.
Your inbox is another barnacle of digital life: receipts, newsletters and long-forgotten alerts clog attention and hide the messages that matter. Sort by size, sender or date to blast away the biggest offenders first, and unsubscribe from lists you never read. That small sweep can make your day-to-day email far less noisy and a lot quicker to scan.
Go through your apps and think like a thief: if an app required an account, that account may still hold your details even after you stop using the app. “Every dormant account is an open door. Scammers actively target abandoned logins because no one’s watching,” Sherwood said, and he’s right — if you don’t delete those accounts, they remain potential entry points. Remove unused apps and close their accounts whenever possible to shrink your exposure.
Keep the software you keep current. Check for app store updates and system patches on phones, tablets and computers; those updates often plug security holes and fix bugs that could be exploited. Staying current is a low-effort, high-return way to protect the devices you rely on every day.
Take a brisk audit of what you share publicly across social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. “Limiting what personal information is publicly available helps to reduce the risk of falling victim to cyberattacks such as phishing and identity theft,” said Chad Thunberg, chief information security officer at cybersecurity company Yubico. Adjust privacy settings, lock down who sees past posts and remove anything that’s not helping you.
Check which third-party services have access to your accounts and cut the ones you no longer need. Services that let you log in with Facebook, Apple or Google are convenient, but they also create chains of access that can be pried open. When I looked at my own accounts, a few expired connections remained alongside one active photobook service I didn’t remember using, and removing it closed a small but real privacy gap.
Consider moving beyond passwords to modern authentication. “Passkeys are two parts of a code that only make sense when combined, kind of like a digital key and padlock,” Thunberg said, and a growing list of services supports them. Platforms including Google, Amazon, Facebook and eBay now offer passkey options, and they require a fingerprint, face scan or PIN so “they cannot be faked, intercepted or replicated by AI-based attacks,” Thunberg said.
Use a password manager whether or not you adopt passkeys, because unique credentials for each account are still best practice. Apple, Google and Samsung include basic password managers on phones, and there are full-featured third-party options like 1Password, BitWarden and Nordpass for folks who want more control. “A password manager not only generates strong, unique passwords for each account, but also ensures users never have to remember them all,” Thunberg said, so it’s an easy upgrade for better security without the mental load.
