My buddy Dave in Seattle still uses the same password for everything, and it drives me nuts

We were grabbing a beer after a shift, and he logged into his email on his phone right in front of me. I saw him type 'Seahawks2014' and I just had to say something. I mean, that's his bank, his social media, everything. He just shrugged and said 'who's gonna hack me?' like it was a joke. Has anyone else had a friend who just will not listen about basic password safety?

3 comments

3 Comments

matthew_morgan7d ago

@perez.grace's got a solid point about the email thing, that's the real nightmare right there. But here's something nobody's brought up yet: even if Dave thinks he's too boring to hack, his password being Seahawks2014 tells me he's probably using that same password for his work login too. That's the scary part nobody thinks about. One breach at his employer and suddenly the whole company's network is compromised because Dave couldn't pick a different password. And honestly, what's it gonna take for him to change? A lost paycheck? His boss getting a ransom note from some script kiddie?

perez.grace1mo ago

That "who's gonna hack me" line is the worst... like does he think hackers only go after famous people? I had a cousin get her Instagram taken over because she used her dog's name for everything. They posted weird stuff and locked her out for a week. What would Dave do if someone actually got into his email and reset all his other passwords?

gavinwood1mo ago

My buddy Mark used "password123" for his PayPal and lost about four hundred bucks last year. He had to cancel his cards and everything, it was a huge mess. I mean, @perez.grace, your cousin's story is exactly why that thinking is so bad. Hackers just run bots that try the same dumb passwords on every site. They don't care who you are. Dave would probably be totally stuck if that happened, crying to some customer service line for days.