Every day we hear about another website that’s been compromised, exposing client’s login information, and potentially making them vulnerable to theft, fraud, and misuse of their accounts. But it’s not just those sites you have to worry about.
Experts recommend that you change all of your passwords for the websites you use for your business and at home, when one of the sites you use gets hacked
Why?
Because most people use the same usernames, emails, and passwords for multiple sites. When one site gets compromised, creative hackers can access and use your information to login to other sites. Even if you don’t think the site that gets compromised (for instance LinkedIn) includes important or current info about you, other sites with the same password may include personal or financial information and expose you to financial harm and/or identity theft.
Recently, Facebook and Netflix cross-referenced password use from old breaches of usernames and passwords from sites like MySpace, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. They discovered that many users had been using the same passwords for their sites and both contacted users to recommend that they change their passwords and reset passwords for some customers proactively.
What’s more, an analysis of LinkedIn’s breach showed that not only do people choose the same passwords for multiple sites, but the passwords themselves are not strong, common, and easily cracked.
Do you use the same password for every website you use?
Experts suggest that you stop. Right now. Seriously. Stop it. Change all passwords for the sites you use, using different passwords for each site.
Have trouble remembering multiple passwords?
If you have trouble remembering them all, there are password management apps like Lastpass, LogMeOnce and 1U Password Manager that will generate and remember them for you.
If you are guilty of this common mistake, don’t feel bad. Last summer Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s social media accounts were hacked. His mistake: reusing the same password for multiple sites.
