Had a grandkid show me why I needed a password manager

Last week my 16 year old grandson asked to borrow my laptop for a school project. He saw me typing in the same password I've used since 2008 for everything. He sat me down and showed me how easy it is for hackers to crack simple passwords and reuse them across sites. I had no idea data breaches are so common these days. Took me an afternoon to switch over to a password manager and honestly I feel a lot better now. Has anyone else had a younger relative force them to update their security habits?

3 comments

3 Comments

graygonzalez23d ago

My password manager changed my whole setup too. The hardest part was remembering one master password but I wrote it down on a piece of paper and stuck it in my fireproof safe. I also have it set to automatically fill in logins on my phone so I don't have to type anything anymore. The random passwords it generates for each site are like 20 characters long with symbols and numbers. Honestly I sleep better knowing my bank account isn't using the same password as my old Neopets account from 2005.

eric_murray2623d ago

lmao the Neopets thing hits too close to home. Pretty sure my childhood account got hacked because I used the same password for everything back then. Now my manager spits out stuff like "xK9#mP2!zQ8$" and I'm just sitting there wondering how my brain is supposed to remember that. Auto fill is a lifesaver though, especially on my phone. Makes me feel like I'm living in the future or something lol.

sagew5016d ago

Gotta say @graygonzalez, I see it the opposite way honestly. All these password managers feel like putting all your eggs in one basket. If someone cracks that one master password, they have keys to everything. What makes that safer than just using a few different passwords you can actually remember?