c/cybersecurity-tips

Finally got why people use password managers after my gmail got hit

Last month someone got into my gmail through a reused password from a forum breach. It took me 4 hours to reset everything and I still lost some old emails. Switched to Bitwarden after that, never going back.

2 comments

kaip11•1d ago

Wasted $150 on a 'password manager' that lied about encryption

Paid for SecureVault last month. Found out their 'military grade' encryption was just base64. That's basic text encoding, not encryption. Lost all my logins when I tried to export. Anyone else fall for these app store scams?

2 comments

piper_flores69•2d ago

That $200 password manager subscription I paid for 2 years upfront

Thought I was being smart. Paid $200 for a 2 year subscription to some fancy password manager. Now six months in and they changed their whole pricing model. Free features moved to a premium tier. I'm stuck with a slow, bloated app. Anyone else get burned by a long term security subscription?

2 comments

abbychen•3d ago

Got hit with a fake password reset text while I was at the DMV last Tuesday

I was sitting in line waiting for my number to be called when a text popped up saying my bank account was locked and I nearly clicked the link before realizing the URL was 'secure-bank-verify.co' instead of my actual bank, so I forwarded it to their fraud team instead and blocked the number - has anyone else noticed these phishing texts getting WAY more convincing lately?

2 comments

robinson.leo•4d ago

Went from getting phished twice a month to zero in 6 months

Started using a password manager and enabling 2FA on everything. Night and day difference. The scammers used to get me with fake login pages. Now I just check the URL before typing anything. Has anyone else noticed a huge drop in spam after switching to an authenticator app over SMS codes?

2 comments

daniel214•5d ago

That chat with my dad about password managers finally clicked

My dad called me last week asking why I kept bugging him about using a password manager. He said 'I've used the same password since 2003 and nothing bad happened yet.' I had to explain that just because the house hasn't caught on fire doesn't mean you shouldn't have a smoke detector. It hit different hearing him say he didn't know where to start and felt overwhelmed by all the options. Has anyone else had to convince an older family member to switch over and what finally worked for you?

2 comments

ray_mitchell•6d ago

Lost my Facebook account for 3 days because of a quiz app

I clicked on one of those 'what 90s movie character are you' quizzes last Tuesday, just for fun on a slow afternoon. Next thing I know, my account was posting spam links to all my friends and I got locked out. Spent two whole days going through Facebook's recovery system before I got it back. Has anyone else had a dumb little quiz or game app cause this kind of trouble?

2 comments

angelas78•7d ago

Found a 3 year old phishing email hiding in my spam folder yesterday

I was cleaning out my spam folder yesterday and found an email from "PayPal Support" that looked real. It had the logo, the right fonts, everything. I almost clicked it back in 2021 but something felt off. I checked the sender address and it was paypa1-security @ something. That single character swap saved me. Has anyone else found old scam emails that slipped past filters?

2 comments

hill.david•7d ago

A buddy told me my 2FA setup was actually making me less safe

Last month at my shop I kept getting locked out of my parts ordering account. Old password was a mess so I turned on two factor with text codes. A buddy who does IT work came by to help with my shop computer and saw my setup. He told me SMS based 2FA is actually pretty weak because hackers can clone your SIM card or intercept texts. I never thought of that. He switched me over to using an authenticator app instead. Now I use Google Authenticator for all my logins. The codes are right there on my phone and I dont get locked out anymore. Has anyone else had a bad experience with text message 2FA?

2 comments

kaip11•9d ago

TIL I'd rather use a password manager app than trust my browser's built-in one after my dad got his Facebook hacked last month

I picked Bitwarden over Google's autofill because I didn't like the idea of all my logins being tied to one account if someone got into my email, and so far it's been smooth but has anyone else had trouble getting family members to actually switch over?

2 comments

brooke475•10d ago

Unpopular opinion: password managers still freak me out a bit

I mean, I've been using one for about 8 months now after my buddy kept pushing me to try it. He showed me how many of my old passwords were reused across like 30 different sites and I honestly felt dumb. But there's still this nagging voice in my head that says what if someone cracks my master password and then they have everything. I know the encryption is supposed to be solid but idk, putting all my eggs in one basket makes me nervous. Has anyone else felt this way and gotten over it or do you still keep some passwords in your head?

3 comments

mary_kelly•10d ago

That moment I realized my 'strong' password was a joke

Last month I got a notification from Google that someone tried to log into my email from a city in Nigeria. I panicked and went to check my password, thinking oh it's fine I used a mix of letters and numbers. But then I realized I had been using the same 8 character password for like 7 years across 15 different accounts. That's when it hit me that my password was basically just a slightly harder version of 'password123'. I changed everything that day to a password manager and now I have 20 different passwords I don't even know. Has anyone else had that moment where you thought you were safe but really weren't?

2 comments

leep89•25d ago

Fell for a fake antivirus renewal email, lost $180 before I caught it

It started with an email that looked exactly like my Norton renewal notice, same logo and layout. I clicked the link, paid $180 with my credit card, and got a confirmation page that felt a little off. Three days later I called Norton to check on my subscription and they told me that email was a phishing scam. Now I'm dealing with a frozen card and a credit dispute, but I'm mostly mad I didn't check the sender address first. Has anyone else gotten one of these fake renewal emails that look way too real?

2 comments

kim_hart7•25d ago

Why does nobody talk about the human side of phishing tests at work?

I work at a mid sized company in Austin and our IT guy sent out a fake phishing email last month. One of our older coworkers actually clicked it and reported it to him personally saying 'hey is this legit?' The IT guy basically laughed at him in front of everyone. Now the guy feels stupid and tells me he won't report anything again cause he doesn't want to look dumb. Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of training people? If we shame folks for being cautious how are they supposed to learn? Has anyone else seen this backfire at their job?

2 comments

the_betty•26d ago

Realized my old router was wide open after a friend showed me how to check the admin login panel...

I went into 192.168.0.1 after they mentioned default passwords and found my neighbors had been piggybacking on my wifi for like 6 months, has anyone else ever checked their router settings?

2 comments

olivia_hernandez•28d ago

Coffee shop wifi in Austin made me stop using public networks for banking

Watched someone pull a pineapple device out of their backpack at Epoch Coffee last week and that's when I realized my bank login on the free wifi was a terrible idea, does anyone actually trust cafe hotspots anymore?

2 comments

fiona_clark•29d ago

Finally caved and started using a password manager after my work laptop got hit with malware last Tuesday.

Watching our IT guy spend 6 hours cleaning up a keylogger that got in through a reused password from a forum I signed up for in 2018 finally made me dump my sticky note system for Bitwarden, anyone else hold out way too long on this?

2 comments

willow_martin•1mo ago

The day I realized my "strong" password was a joke

I was sitting in a coffee shop in Austin last month, reading about how hackers crack passwords using rainbow tables. It hit me that my "P@ssw0rd123!" was just recycled from a 2016 breach list. I ran my email through haveibeenpwned and found 8 different leaks tied to it. Anyone else still using old passwords they thought were smart?

2 comments

patricia634•1mo ago

My password manager locked me out last Tuesday and I'm torn on whether to switch

I was working on a client's network setup in Seattle when my password manager suddenly wouldn't accept my master password. I tried for 20 minutes, even reset my browser, but nothing worked. Finally I had to recover through email which took another hour. Part of me thinks I should switch to a different one for safety, but another part says this was a one-time glitch. Has anyone else had a trusted password manager fail on them and did you stay or leave?

2 comments

cameron_webb•1mo ago

A security audit last month made me ditch my password manager of 5 years

The auditor pointed out that my manager stored plaintext backups in a cloud folder, and I never even checked. Has anyone else had a security pro call them out on a tool they trusted for years?

2 comments

charlesanderson•1mo ago

Switched from free antivirus to paid and my computer actually runs faster now

I used Avast free for like 3 years because money was tight, but last month I finally bit the bullet and paid $40 for a full suite. My startup time went from 2 minutes to 30 seconds and the popups stopped completely. Anyone else notice free security tools are secretly the worst thing for your system?

2 comments

shane244•1mo ago

Server room doors at a hotel in Denver changed my whole approach to passwords

I was staying at this place downtown and saw they had a keycard lock on the server room but the door was propped open with a trash can... the front desk guy told me the manager's password was 'admin123' for everything. That made me go home and change all my router and cloud account passwords that same night. Has anyone else seen something like that in person?

3 comments

christophers27•1mo ago

Just realized I've been using the same password since 2016 after a scare last night

I was scrolling through my password manager and saw this old account I had. Turns out my bank login from 8 years ago still uses the same weak password. I only thought about it because my cousin got his Instagram hacked last week and the guy who did it got into his email too. Made me go through all my accounts and change the big ones. How often do you guys actually rotate your important passwords?

2 comments

burns.richard•1mo ago

That stat about 90% of data breaches coming from phishing emails hit me when my coworker clicked a fake Slack link last Tuesday.

I found it on the Verizon Data Breach report from 2023, and now I keep thinking about how one wrong click almost cost us access to our project files, has anyone else seen a close call like that at work?

2 comments

willow_martin•1mo ago

Question about password managers from a coworker

My coworker Bob told me last year that using a password manager was just putting all my eggs in one basket. I ignored him and used one anyway, and when our company had that data breach in June, it changed all my passwords automatically while he was stuck resetting 40 accounts by hand.

3 comments