Your…
- Fortnite Account
- Domino’s Pizza App
- McDonalds App
- Rocket League Account
- EPIC Account
- DoorDash App
- GrubHub App
- Uber App
- Spotify App
And every other similar service was not “hacked”.
You reused a password that was in a breach, and that is how they got in.
No, your “strong” password is not as strong as you think it is. If you reuse the password other places it’s not secure anymore. Passwords are like condoms; you only use them once.
Before you start to say, “if only they had 2FA” remember hindsight is 20/20. I suggest you read this too.
What Should You Do?
You need to stop reusing passwords.
Then check out https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to see if you’re in any KNOWN security breaches. Also, check your passwords at https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords, and yes it’s safe.
To stop reusing passwords you need to get yourself a password manager and give every account a unique password no matter how non-important you think it is.
I don’t care what password manager you use, just pick one.
All are fine options.
I Don’t Need A Password Manager, I Have A Password System…
Your password system or algo or whatever you want to call it is not clever.
Just read this to learn why.
How Long Should My Passwords Be?
The length of the password does not matter for most online accounts especially the ones I’ve listed at the top.
What matters is uniqueness.
What do unique passwords look like?
Like this…
Dw?oKa!LAUKFwLvP=K35!8F
m7EQ+q>NA*er
sA9srdDcU2qw
surgical plaster bony delicacy
unsoldz8ips
NdOpubERsTIC
All that matters is that it’s 12 or more characters long and it’s not the same as any other passwords you have.
Why Didn’t They Do More To Protect My Account?
I don’t know, maybe they suck?
What I do know is that you should stop worrying about the things you can’t control.
You can’t control what a company does or doesn’t do. What you can control is how you use a unique password for every account. So if that one account gets breached because of their bad security, you won’t lose other accounts that used the same password.
This Is Too Much Work?!
I’m sorry, but welcome to the new normal.
This problem is only going to get worse and reusing passwords and blaming companies when you get hacked is not fixing the issue.
Plus, a password manager makes your life easier. They fill in the passwords for you, and it’s all in one trusted place. You can store other essential info and acts as a digital will too.
You can even get family accounts and share all passwords with the family.
No more guessing the password to your Apple account when you get a new iPhone. No more standing there trying to figure out that one password to that one service you only use so often. No more getting mad and resetting your password once again to something you’ll forget next time. No more thinking of what password should you use for this or that service.
Once you get a password manager, you’ll wonder how you functioned before one.
But I Don’t Trust Password Managers!!!
Good thing I have several articles on this very topic to ease your mind.