Vent: So many people still reuse passwords across sites

My buddy at work just had his Spotify account taken over. Simple stuff. Password from a 2015 LinkedIn breach. He used the same password for his email too. Took them 10 minutes to lock him out of everything. I asked him why he didn't use a different password. He said 'it's too many to remember'. Doesn't know about password managers. Kept telling him for 2 years. Anyone else deal with people ignoring this until it's too late?

2 comments

2 Comments

sullivan.john6d ago

Respectfully disagree. Password managers create a single point of failure that scares me more.

betty_shah6d ago

Hang on, you said a single point of failure. That's exactly the opposite of how they work. A password manager stores hundreds of different passwords behind one master password, so if one site gets hacked, your other accounts aren't toast. Without one, you're either reusing the same password everywhere, which is actually one giant point of failure, or you're writing them on sticky notes. That's way scarier to me than memorizing one good password. Also, most managers have two-factor authentication, so it's not just one thing anyone can guess.