

There’s a strong argument backing this good piece of advice: if a hacker gets access to one of your accounts, he or she will need to work harder to break into all the accounts that you have. The thing that all security experts will agree on is that you should use a unique and strong password for every account you have. And so using a weak password – or variations of the same password – is akin to handing over the keys to your digital life, because password cracking software will guess it in minutes. Even when we create strong passwords, software can still crack them. They will recommend not using any kind of variations of the same password for a simple reason: humans are the weakest link in IT security.

If you ask a security expert, the answer is no.

Can You Reuse the Same or Variations of the Password? After checking her accounts, Kristin Jasper noticed online payments to big name retailers such as Curry's and Argos after she had been hacked. In this way you can get locked out of your digital life in mere minutes, as the TechCrunch writer John Biggs found out.Ī similar issue happened to a UK-based business owner, who lost £3,800 because they dropped the uniqueness of their passwords. If the hacker has the password for one service, it's a no-brainer for them to check whether that password has been reused on other sites. If a hacker gains access to one user account, he or she can easily take over all online accounts and impersonate them.

It's like leaving the keys under the doormat. The number of fraudulent transactions continues to rise each year, and there’s a reason why.īy using the same password across all online accounts, users give hackers easy access to their whole digital life. Using a combination of sophisticated techniques such as phishing attacks and advanced password cracking methods, hackers are able to get access to people's data. How Dangerous Is Using the Same Password for Multiple Accounts?Ĭustomers using the same password when signing up to online banking services, ecommerce sites and other internet-based services requiring sensitive data are unwittingly contributing to rising fraud of accounts. The problem begins when such accounts include services such as PayPal, Amazon, Citi, and the like. have about 130 online accounts connected to a single email address. Studies show, however, that on average users in the U.S. This shouldn't be such a major problem itself if the password is used on platforms that have low potential for an attack.
