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Hot take: Should you use the same password with small tweaks or go totally random?
I used to think adding "2024" to the end of my old password was a safe bet, until a coworker at an IT meetup in Austin showed me how fast brute force tools crack those patterns. Now I'm stuck between using a password manager with random 16-digit strings, which feels secure but a pain to type on my phone. What side do you land on? Do you prioritize convenience or full randomness?
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martinez.karen20d ago
Had a buddy who used 'GuitarHero1' for EVERYTHING" - that's basically what my friend Jen did with "FluffyCat22" for like six years. She thought it was so clever because her cat's name was Fluffy and she added the year she got him. Well, someone got into her Instagram and used it to message her whole family asking for money, saying she was stranded in a different country. Her mom almost wired $500 before Jen called her. The worst part is she still uses that same password for her Netflix, just changed it to "FluffyCat24" now. I don't get it, but some people just won't learn.
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Had a buddy who used "GuitarHero1" for EVERYTHING. Bank account, email, you name it. He thought adding a number at the end made it bulletproof. Got his email hacked and someone ordered $800 worth of gaming stuff on his Amazon. The hacker just ran a script that tried every common word with numbers at the end. Took like 20 seconds. He switched to a password manager after that mess and now just copies the random passwords from his phone. Still complains about typing them in sometimes but says it's way better than getting cleaned out again.
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