Old coworker's password advice saved me from a mess last Tuesday

My buddy Dave who used to do IT for a bank always told me to use a passphrase, not a password. Last Tuesday my email got a login alert from a device in Chicago, and I panicked because I use that email for my bank statements. I had a 14-character password with numbers and symbols, but it was a word from a song plus my birth year, so it was guessable. Dave's thing was stringing 4 random words together, like 'purpletruckwinterleaf', and adding a number at the end. I checked my other accounts, and none of them were touched because I'd used that style for those. Has anyone else had a simple tip like that actually stop a breach, or did I just get lucky?

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fiona13019d ago

Did that scare you enough to change all your passwords, or just the one?