Every new online account requires a fresh password that can be quite frustrating to come up with, and it’s clear that many people agree with this. Microsoft estimates that around 73% of people use duplicate passwords for their accounts. If you consider the sheer number of people who go online, this number becomes extremely large, making it a significant problem.
Why is Reusing your Passwords an Issue?
All of our online accounts are connected in one way or another. For example, when we sign up for an account, we usually attach an email address to that account. Our social media apps all require an email address to confirm a person’s identity. Even professional platforms like LinkedIn have a list of all our details right on the profile page. Although this connection is highly convenient for online users, reusing passwords can put your accounts at risk.
If even one of your accounts were to get compromised, this could lead to the other one getting breached, too. All the hacker has to do is look for an account with relatively weak security and work their way up from there. This is especially true if you’re a person who has a ton of different accounts with overused passwords. Cyber breaches happen all the time, and once your personal mail gets broken into, it can be very tricky to get it back. Your information can get stolen in a matter of minutes before you even notice that anything has gone wrong.
One of the most common causes of data breaches is poor passwords, and it’s easy to see why. We’ve seen many companies put measures in place to stop this issue from occurring, but a majority of people still reuse passwords. The bottom line is, when a single password is all that stands between a cyberattack and your account, you need to make sure that the password is as complex as possible.
So What Can You Do To Solve this Problem?
The reason why people tend to keep reusing passwords is that they forget them. No one can properly remember around ten different unique passwords for their accounts. It’s simply not very plausible, unless you have a little assistance with it. Using a password manager can help you save several complex passwords on your devices without having to remember them. This makes it an easy and quick solution.
Another useful tool is two-factor authentication. Many companies use this tool to strengthen their online user accounts, and some places like Google have even set up multi-factor authentication tools. This helps strengthen the security of your account immensely. Doing a regular reset of your account passwords can also be a great way to avoid compromising your data, but this task can be quite challenging to follow through with. In case you’re looking for a quick fix, you could add a few characters to an already existing password to strengthen it.
There are many options out there, so pick the ones that are best for you. Whichever way you choose, just remember that having a solid password will help secure all your accounts and keep your online presence much more protected.
