That IT guy at my office told me to stop reusing passwords and it hit different

I was at my desk last Tuesday complaining about having to reset another account password, and our IT guy Dave just looked at me and said 'you know every single one of those is probably on a dark web list already, right?' Then he pulled up my work email on his screen and showed me it appeared in 3 different breaches from sites I used 5 years ago. It really made me think about how lazy I've been with my logins. Anyone else ever had someone call them out like that and actually change their habits?

2 comments

2 Comments

nancy_green20d ago

Disagree with u @richard_ramirez on this one honestly. Those manager apps just create a single point of failure and if that gets hacked ur screwed way worse than reusing passwords for random sites nobody cares about. I still reuse passwords for stuff like my local pizza place's loyalty account or some random forum I joined years ago. The real threat is people using the same password for their bank and their dog grooming appointment calendar. Dave showing you that stuff on the dark web is scary but it mostly means you used weak passwords on sites that got hacked, not that password reuse is the root of all evil.

richard_ramirez20d ago

Used to think strong passwords were enough, but seeing proof like that changes things. Dave basically showed me my own info sitting on some random site and that hit harder than any security training. Been using a manager app since then and honestly it's way less annoying than resetting passwords every two weeks.