Why Say No To Reusing Passwords?

Last Update On : 2019-01-03 | Published On : 2019-01-03

No matter how complex it is to remember all your passwords, it is advised to keep your passwords to yourselves. Some say that you can save the passwords to a password manager, but some advice otherwise. People generally don’t want to get hassled with all of this and have found a workaround to make things work. They keep a single password for everything as it is pretty convenience. However, this convenience could harm you as it is insecure and makes you vulnerable.

As if a hacker gets on to any of your passwords, then he could easily access all your accounts which has the same password resulting in a security breach. The cybercriminals who hacked the data will try to use the same password for other accounts. If you used the same password, it will be a cakewalk for the hacker to get all your private information, be it your passwords for shopping websites or banking websites.

With all this information, the hackers could get the credit card information as well. They can gather more information from Facebook. They could also use these social media websites or shopping websites to dupe you into money. The hackers could borrow money from your friends, or shop for anything they like.

And this is not where it ends, these hackers could change the password for all your accounts and lock you out of all your own accounts. So, if your accounts have been hacked, then not only social media accounts, but you have to bid goodbye to your shopping and banking accounts, as you can even reset your passwords, with the real information.

This seems to be the check and mate in this case. There seems to be any solution to it. The only thing that could be done is get all your accounts and credit cards block, change passwords for all other accounts which have been spared by hackers till.

Stats:

Various sources suggest that a huge population whose passwords are leaked used alphanumeric passwords & did not use any special symbols or characters.

From those, approx. 45% of them were all lowercase alphabets, somewhat 11% numeric and 1% are all uppercase, the remaining percentage were of alphanumeric.

From the list of unique passwords, 118,000 passwords were created and used by single user Likewise, 17,000 passwords are the ones which are shared by two users and 5,000 approx. were used by exclusively by three users.

There are a few tips to go on:

After checking the data, you must be thinking what to do, don’t worry, just keep a few things in mind

Never, ever, ever use the same password.
Use a password manager to get relieved from the stress of remembering them.
Changing important passwords less than frequently.

Also Read : Tips To Create Secure Passwords To Protect Your Account

To Conclude:

The ultimate thing that you need to swear is not to keep the same passwords for your accounts. Also, use two-factor authentication everywhere if possible. Keep a unique username and password for every web account you own. So, in case any of them is imperiled, rest stays untouched.

Keeping different passwords for every account is what will make you understand why people need a password manager. As you age, you tend to forget, or you can be too busy to remember all your passwords. For seamlessly logging in to your accounts, you need a password manager.