Vent: A friend called my password system 'easy to guess' and I had to change 80 logins

I used the same base word with numbers and symbols for everything, like 'Summer2024!' for my main stuff. My friend, who works in IT, saw me log in once and said, 'That's just a dictionary word with basic add-ons, a bot cracks those in seconds.' It hit me hard. I spent the next three days using a password manager to create and store totally random codes for every single account. My old method was lazy, but I thought it was safe enough. Has anyone else had to rebuild their whole login setup from scratch like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

julia_lee1mo ago

Feel your pain, I did the same thing after a security talk scared me. Went from "FluffyBunny78!" on everything to a manager full of nonsense like "xK9!qp2$LmV". The worst part was updating my ancient email that still used security questions, what's my first pet's name, who even remembers that.

paigep201mo ago

Tell me about it, my password manager looks like alphabet soup now.

grace_white1mo ago

Disagree, @paigep20, that soup is your best defense.