My brother's random comment made me rethink my whole password system

I was talking to my brother Dave last Tuesday about how I use the same base password with different numbers for every site. He just laughed and said 'so if one leaks, they can guess the rest in like 2 minutes.' Honestly never thought of it that way before. Has anyone else had a family member point out something obvious you were missing about your security habits?

2 comments

2 Comments

angelacooper21d ago

Man that sticky note thing hits close to home. I mean isn't it crazy how the most obvious stuff is right in front of us for years and we just don't see it? It reminds me of how people leave their garage door clicker in their unlocked car overnight thinking it's fine, but you're basically handing someone a key to your house along with your car. @the_morgan I think we all have that one person in our lives who points out the dumb stuff we're doing while doing something even dumber themselves, like your brother with his password1 joke.

the_morgan21d ago

My brother did the same thing to me except he found my password list stuck to my monitor on a sticky note. Called it my "hacker welcome mat" which stung pretty bad coming from the guy who still uses "password1" for everything. The worst part is he was totally right, I had the same base with years tacked on the end so if you got my reddit password you basically had my banking password minus two keystrokes. Now I'm stuck using a manager app like a normal person and I still get the urge to write it down somewhere "just in case".