My IT guy friend called me out on my password habits last week

I was bragging about using my dog's name with a 1 at the end for everything. He just stared at me and said 'you do realize bots crack that in under 2 seconds right?' He then showed me a list of the top 1000 most common passwords and mine was in the top 50. I thought I was being clever but turns out I'm just another statistic out of the 15 million accounts leaked last year. He made me set up a password manager right there on my phone. Has anyone else had a friend totally bust their security bubble like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

andrew64614d ago

Man, isn't that the truth! I actually read something recently about how those security questions are basically useless now. They said hackers share the most common answers on dark web forums, and stuff like "Spot" for a dog's name or "98 Rock" for your favorite song show up all the time. @torres.elizabeth is right about that first pet thing too - my buddy showed me a list from a leaked database and it was insane how many people use "Fluffy" or "Max" with a year tacked on. It's wild to think that something we think is clever is just feeding the bots exactly what they expect.

torres.elizabeth14d ago

This happens all the time with little everyday things we think we're being smart about. My sister-in-law swore her "security question" answers were unbreakable until her friend showed her that "first pet's name" is literally the first thing hackers try after your birthday. Makes you wonder what else we're all doing wrong without realizing it. My grandmother still uses "Password1" for her email, and she's absolutely convinced nobody would guess it. Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out how obvious our "clever" habits really are.