A complex password is a necessity in the age of cyberthreats, data breaches, and other security incidents. When you’ve landed on what you think is the perfect, complicated, yet easy-to remember password, it’s tempting to use it for every site you log in to. This is a shockingly common — and very dangerous — mistake.
When an online retailer or website gets hacked, oftentimes all you hear about in the news is how many credit card numbers were lost or the scope of the financial damage. You rarely hear about the thousands of user accounts that were compromised. But they’re there!
If yours is among those compromised accounts, it’s possible that your username and password are published and available to anybody who wants to look at it on the Internet. A clever crook knows that you probably use the same password on the compromised website as you do on your eBay, Amazon or other online accounts tied to your bank account. So, they try it out and, lo and behold, now they have access to your bank account.
It’s possible to keep the password madness under control. Ask us for tips for having unique but memorable passwords. You might be surprised by how easy it really is.