Coworker ripped my password habits apart and I'm glad she did

A few months ago at a coffee shop in Portland, a coworker saw me type my password and said 'dude, you're still using something from your college email list?' I had been cycling through three passwords for years, none of them more than 10 characters. She showed me how she uses a password manager with randomly generated 20-character strings for every site. I switched everything over in about three hours that weekend. The hardest part was trusting the manager app itself honestly. Has anyone else had a wake up call about weak passwords from a friend or colleague?

3 comments

3 Comments

nathan_kim15d ago

The trust thing is real, took me a full week before I stopped double checking Bitwarden autofill. Pro tip if you're still nervous, write down your master password on paper and lock it in a drawer at home, just don't save it anywhere digital. After a month of using random 20 char passwords I felt dumb for resisting it so long.

drews5515d ago

Guess I'm in the minority here because I've never had any issue just remembering my passwords or using my browser's built in manager. Is it really that big of a deal if someone has to reset a password once in a blue moon?

parker_webb14d ago

Man, I used to say the exact same thing until I locked myself out of my own email account three times in one month. Resetting passwords once in a blue moon? More like once a week for me because my memory is basically a sieve. I finally caved and got a password manager after realizing I was just using "Password123!" variations for everything. Honestly, the biggest relief was not having to play the "forgot password" game every time I wanted to check a website.