If you haven’t already heard, a Twitter employee’s email account was hacked yesterday and confidential corporate information became exposed.
I don’t know if users login details and passwords were compromised – perhaps someone could let me know if they’ve heard anything about that – but it does pose an interesting question…
Do you use the same password for every website that you have to log into?
With the rapid increase in social networking sites and other web properties that require registration the need to remember multiple names and passwords can quickly become overwhelming.
I have a few friends who ’solved’ that problem by using just one name and password for every site they visit.
Whilst it may save them the hassle of remembering lots of different details it does pose a security risk.
If their details are compromised on one site a hacker could then potentially break into their accounts everywhere they go on the net!
With that in mind, I wonder do you re-use the same password everywhere you go?
If so, do you feel secure?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, but it is said that by combining several dictionary words (as in the example I gave about enjoying eating cake on Sundays) it is very strong security as the number of possible combinations are extremely high and therefore very difficult to crack.
It’s also a good idea to use non dictionary terms, such as “wertert” or to add some numbers such as “wertert543″. A longer easy to remember pasword can also be very secure, such as “ienjoyeatingcakeonsundays”.
Another way of ensuring security is to change your password regularly.
The worst thing you can do is use the same password for every site as you pointed out – if someone gains acess to one account they then have access to all your accounts.
Using the same password all the time is a shockingly bad idea!!
Long passwords are better than short ones for sure but you also need to avoid ‘dictionary words’ as there are programs designed to crack those very quickly indeed.
Yes, it would take longer and by quite some time too, but it would still be broken much quicker than a password that contains random groupings of letters, numbers and symbols for example.