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“Shadow Email Accounts: The Hidden Data Exfil Path”

January 12, 2026

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Employees Create Personal Accounts for Work Use

To bypass slow IT processes, staff spin up Gmail, ProtonMail, or Outlook accounts for quick client communication. These accounts fall outside your visibility and policies.

Sensitive Files Get Sent to Personal Inboxes

Reports, contracts, credentials — all forwarded “just to finish work at home.” Once data hits a personal inbox, encryption, DLP, and auditing disappear.

Cloud-Based Email is Hard to Govern

Even with SaaS security, rogue accounts used on unmanaged devices bypass protections. They live outside MDM, SIEM, and access logs — a blind spot by design.

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Forwarding Rules Are Used by Attackers Too

Once inside an inbox, attackers set up auto-forwarding to hidden destinations. Victims don’t notice, alerts don’t trigger, and exfiltration becomes routine.

Domain Lookalikes Trick Internal Users

fake-mycompany.co looks like mycompany.com. One wrong character, and confidential emails go to an attacker-controlled inbox. Domain fuzzing tools exploit muscle memory.

Email Controls Need to Expand Beyond Your Domain

It’s not enough to secure *@yourcompany.com. Policies must flag external domains, personal email use, and hidden forwarding. The threat is off-domain — but on your risk sheet.

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