You might have heard the advice never to reuse your passwords. It’s great advice, since a data breach on one account could end up opening up all of your accounts to hackers. That said, there’s yet another reason not to reuse your passwords. This time, it comes from the dark web.
The dark web poses a major risk for anyone who reuses passwords. Those seeking stolen and leaked information can find it in abundance — hundreds of millions of users’ information, to be more specific.
A survey conducted of Fortune 1000 companies found that 543 million employee credentials are easily found on underground hacking forums, and almost 26 million passwords belonging to Fortune 1000 company employees could be found on the dark web. Could yours be among them?
Let’s take it one step past passwords — 281 millions records of personally identifiable information are also available, making these users the perfect marks for phishing scams.
Here’s the deal — we know that reusing passwords is a dangerous exercise in security. Anyone who gains access to one of our account logins could easily break into any other accounts that share the same credentials. But the sheer amount of information available to hackers means you can’t afford to reuse passwords for your many, many accounts.
Cover photo by Nhu Nguyen on Unsplash
