I used to think password managers were overkill until I hit 200 accounts

Last week I was cleaning out my old devices and realized I had something like 200 different logins across work, social media, and random shopping sites. I was just using the same 3 passwords over and over (you know, recycling them like crazy) because I figured I was too small a target for hackers. Then I read a story about a guy who lost his whole crypto wallet because one of his reused passwords got leaked from a forum he joined 10 years ago. That scared me straight, so I finally tried Bitwarden and now I sleep way better at night. Has anyone else had that moment where they realized their password habits were way riskier than they thought?

2 comments

2 Comments

laura1891mo ago

...and it's weird because that's kind of how a lot of stuff goes in life, isn't it? we don't realize something's broken until we see a really bad example of what happens when it fails. like with passwords, it's that one story of a friend losing access to their email or getting their identity stolen that finally makes people move on it. i had that same wake-up call a couple years ago when a site i used got breached and suddenly i was getting spam from all directions. it's crazy how we'll keep doing the same risky thing for years just because nothing bad has happened yet. the whole "it won't happen to me" mindset seems to be the default for a lot of everyday choices, not just passwords.

sarah5311mo ago

Oh man, that reminds me of my friend Jenna. She used the same password for everything - her email, her bank, her Netflix, everything. One day her email got hacked because some random forum she signed up for in 2015 got breached. The hacker locked her out of everything in like two hours. Changed her bank password, ordered stuff on Amazon, the whole mess. Took her three weeks and a ton of phone calls to get it all back. She still gets stressed talking about it.

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