The title of this blog post could easily win the award for the most boring thing we have ever posted. That’s coming from people who talk about tax day in day out. However, it could be one of the most important too.
Passwords suck. Full stop. They suck. 90% of us use the same password across a myriad of services, which is usually some combination of your dog's name, your address, your postcode, or all three. Then when we actually use it, we end up stuck trying to remember which silly variation we used because the website needed a capital letter, a symbol, a number, and some obscure graphic that looks like the 3rd pyramid of Egypt. So here we're, sitting at the login page, resetting our password for the third time this week, with no end in sight.
Are you safe?
There are some serious security concerns using the same password over and over again. Using the same password (or a variation of it), on every site you visit doesn't necessarily make it more guessable.
The problem is when a website or service you use is compromised and that username and password you used to login are leaked, someone could then use your credentials to login to ALL your websites.
By extension, if you use my Mydog123 for your password at one website, what are the chances you use Mydog1234 somewhere else? Considering most of us have a PayPal, Apple, or Google account where someone could potentially rack up thousands in purchases before we even notice, it starts to get pretty scary, quickly.
Be unique!
So, what can you do? You make sure you use a unique, secure password for every service you visit. This ensures that even if one or ten of your passwords is compromised, the rest of your services are safe.
But how can you be expected to remember 25 different passwords that are nothing but some random assortment of letters and numbers?
Use a password manager
Think of your password manager like a vault. A vault that uses one really strong master password to unlock. In this vault, you can store all your login information, encrypted and locked away from prying eyes, viewable only to you. Beyond that, they offer lots of time savings features. Password generation, auto filling of login information, and the ability to store all kinds of other private information like credit card details.
Here at illumin8, every member of the team uses Dashlane, a secure, free to use password manager. It saves the team huge amounts of time when jumping between the various services we use daily. Soon, we will be converting to LastPass for a fully cloud based solution. Both are fantastic products that we highly recommend.
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