When you get those renewal reminders for your domains and they get stuffed to the bottom of your inbox until the date whizzes past and they expire, it’s worth thinking about how you used those domains and what trail they leave across the digital landscape.

British hacker and entrepreneur, Ben Reyes, recently discovered that, through a domain he had newly registered, he was able to access someone else’s email history, calendar and contacts. Because the domain had been tied with Google Apps by the previous owner and then left to expire, when Ben came to link it himself he found he had the opportunity, through the reclamation process, to become the new owner.

Once this process was completed Ben found he had access to a cornucopia of personal data of the person who let the domain lapse. Armed with this data Ben knew he would have been able to unlock the security process of other big internet names like Amazon Web Services where potentially he could get access to such as the last 4 digits of the person credit card.