What email service do you use for your recovery email?

[Nvidiaguy07]

Was going through and changing my passwords/recovery info like i normally do every so often, and i realized that my setup was pretty dumb.

My most important accounts are:
google - main email - all recovery options go here. number one priority to protect.
dropbox - pretty important
hotmail - MS info here - skydrive - xbox live, and linked to paypal.
paypal - linked to bank account

then after that:
amazon
ebay
newegg
steam
bank/credit card stuff
and then anything that isnt high priority i usually just make it something simple and dont really change all that often.

Ive got two factor on gmail and dropbox, but I just realized that hotmail doesnt have this feature, so im not able to use it. Ive had my hotmail email and my recovery email for some time now, and a while ago when i basically stopped using it, it got hacked into. Thank god nothing happened and i recovered it, and changed all passwords and such, but now im wondering what i should do as my recovery option.

I should also point out since using skydrive/windows 8/MS services, my hotmail password is almost as important as anything else, so i really cant abandon it. If someone were to steal that password, skydrive now give you full access to your entire PC with that password.

So my first question is: how can i protect that account, besides having a strong password that is updated frequently?

Secondly: which should i use a for a recovery email? I guess i could make a second gmail just for this sole purpose of having a stronger recovery email - but with that i worry about either forgetting that password, or that account becoming deactivated from never using it.

Lastly - since i do sometimes use my hotmail email now, i have pretty much everything go through gmail (forwarded to gmail, and deleted in hotmail - and then i can send messages from hotmail in gmail) Stupid me wasnt thinking that if i ever did need to use recovery, the recovery email would then be forwarded to my gmail - which i would not have access to if i had lost the password. What should i do in this case? I may just have to go back to using hotmails interface, but id really rather not since i like having everything available in my gmail.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[nickbits]

wife's email

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

wife's email

no wife yet. I see yahoo uses two step, so maybe ill use that.

But i think the main problem here is microsoft. Like i said im starting to rely pretty heavily on hotmail/MS, and if someone gets that password, they have access to anything on my PC. As long as its my recovery email, its also linked to gmail too (but i do think 2step will still deny someone trying to get my gmail password by using that.)