A complex password is a necessity, but hard to remember. And with so many websites requiring a password these days, users often reuse the same password again and again with different sites. BAD idea.

When a big company gets hacked (like LinkedIn, for example), the criminals post and sell the username, e-mail, password and confidential information in that account. Since many people reuse the same password, hackers will try that e-mail and password combination across multiple sites, including Amazon, PayPal or other sites where you might store credit card information.

Remember, they aren’t doing this manually. They have highly sophisticated software to automate ALL of this. If you want a better way of storing and organizing UNIQUE passwords, we recommend using a password management software program.

The bottom line is that no matter how much of a pain it is, it is very important to have different passwords for each online account – and make sure they are TRULY unique, not just with a “1” or an “!” as an extra character.

 

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