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Found out I was reusing the same password on 41 different accounts when a site I signed up for in 2009 got hacked
I signed up for some recipe forum in 2009 and used the password I had been using since high school. Never thought much about it. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, that forum got hit, and someone tried logging into my email with the same combo. My bank flagged a weird login from a city I've never been to, and that is what tipped me off. I sat down and counted every account I could think of that shared that password, and it was 41. Forty one places. My email, my bank, an old photo site I forgot I even had, a pet supply store, all of it. Took me a whole Sunday afternoon to change them all and set up a password manager, which I should have done back when my nephew told me to in 2018. Anyone else figure out how deep the hole goes only after something already happened?
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harper_wells7d ago
Man, the part that gets me is that the hack that tipped you off wasn't even the dangerous one. That old recipe forum was probably worthless to the hackers, but they didn't need it to be valuable. They just needed your email and password combo so they could try it everywhere else. There are bots that do this all day, taking leaked lists and running them against thousands of sites in minutes, like a key that opens every door in the building. So the real damage wasn't the forum getting hit, it was that one small nobody site handed over the key to everything. This is why I stopped treating "junk" signups as harmless, because that throwaway account from 2009 can be the weakest link that brings down your bank. Makes you wonder how many dead accounts you still have out there that you don't even remember making.
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