They Can Try to Scam Your Friends and Family
A popular way for scammers to get people’s sensitive information is a technique called phishing. This basically means that a scammer impersonates someone else to try to get people to offer up their personal data or even open their wallets.
If someone can send emails from your account, your friends and family would have no reason to believe you’re not the one who sent the email. Normal spam filters also won’t apply here if the message really did come from your email account. This means they may be willing to divulge sensitive information that they wouldn’t otherwise give to a stranger.
A scammer may even try to extort money out of those closest to you by impersonating you and claiming that they’re in trouble and need immediate help.
Not only can that put your friends and family at risk, but the scammers might also get a hold of their email accounts too, spreading the problem even further.