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Rant: Password reuse finally bit me after 15 years of laziness

I used the same password for everything since like 2008. Email, banking, forums, even my work login. I figured nobody would care about my accounts anyway. Then last month someone got into my old Neopets account and used it to send spam to everyone on my friends list. That was embarrassing enough, but then they used the same password to get into my PayPal and tried to send $200 to themselves. I only caught it because my bank texted me about the unusual purchase. So now I'm going through every single account changing passwords. Using a password manager now and honestly it's way less annoying than I thought. The resetting everything part is the worst though. Has anyone else had to do this cleanup after getting hit with reused passwords?
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2 Comments
lee_barnes70
20 character passwords are overkill, 12-16 is plenty secure and way easier to type in.
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evand65
evand655d ago
Reset everything then set the manager to generate random 20 character passwords for each site.
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