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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?
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campbell.david10d ago
Actually, that's not quite right about 8 character passwords being a joke. The length matters way more than the complexity - an 8 character mixup is still easier to crack than a 16 character phrase of random words. But you're right that reusing passwords was the real problem (and the Nigeria thing is terrifying, honestly).
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