Windows Secrets Newsletter: Reusing passwords comes at a price

By Woody Leonhard/Windows Secrets Newsletter

You can find no end of advice on creating strong passwords, using clever tricks, stats, mnemonics, and such.

But all too frequently we (and I include myself in this rebuke) tend to reuse little passwords at what we think are inconsequential sites. It’s a big mistake — here’s why.

This story is true. As the admonition goes: only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I live in a small town a coupleof hours away from a big city we’ll call Metropolis. There are several daily newspapers in Metropolis, and one of the largest (let’s call it the Daily Planet) boasts a very nice website. The people who create and maintain the Daily Planet site are excellent designers and programmers — but they aren’t security experts.

One of Metropolis’s citizens is a regular guy named, oh, Joe. He’s pretty good with computers, and he knows enough to use strong passwords on bank and stock-market sites.

But Joe just got hacked — and bilked in a most unexpected way.

Here’s the rest of the story.

This post is excerpted with permission from Windows Secrets.