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Used a password manager for 3 months after 15 years of sticky notes, and one of those actually kept me safe
For about 15 years I kept every password on sticky notes stuck inside a kitchen drawer, and I honestly thought that was fine because nobody ever broke into my place. Then last spring my email got hit with a login attempt from some IP in Brazil, and it shook me enough to finally try an actual password manager. I set it up on a rainy Sunday in April, moved 62 accounts over in about two hours, and made every single password a long random string like 'Tf8$mQ2!vLp9'. Three months later I got a notice that my old bank login showed up in some breach dump, but the password on that account had already been changed to a 20 character monster, so nothing happened. What really got me was how fast the sticky note method falls apart the second you need to share one password with your partner or type it on your phone at the store. Has anyone else noticed the moment you stop reusing passwords your whole threat level drops, or am I giving myself too much credit here?
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hugo_ellis19d ago
62 accounts in two hours is fast, I'll give you that. But the breach notice thing does not really prove much when you think about it. Your old bank password could have been "password123" and nothing would have happened either, because a breach dump just means the login showed up somewhere, not that someone actually tried it on your account. I've been reusing maybe six passwords for a decade and the only time I got burned was when I signed up for some sketchy guitar tab site back in 2011. The Brazil login attempt on your email sounds like a bot just spraying common passwords, which happens to everybody and mostly goes nowhere. Not saying the manager is bad, but I wonder if you're chalking up a win to a change that may not have done anything that day.
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