Your place in the ether of the internet is tied to your email address, and changing it without all the proper considerations can leave you disconnected from information that you may need the most.

“Your email address can often be used to associate you with multiple accounts and services and, in many cases, can provide other information about you, such as where you work,” says Hamerstone.

An email address can be even more revealing, though, because it can be linked to other data, including where you went to school, the make and model of the car you drive, and your ethnicity.

Your email address is actually a precious commodity for hackers because it’s essentially “a tile to the mosaic of your life,” says Adam Levin, cyber security expert and founder of CyberScout.