(W) (I) Why you need different passwords on each website

I have blogged before on the using a unique password for each website and why you need a to do this as it is no longer an option, it is a requirement to keep you data, dollars and dignity safe.  I referrecd to the Gawker breach in the last blog, but now, the folks that brought you the Sony breaches and several others, LulzSec has posted the usernames and passwords for roughly 64,000 credentials.  MediaFire was kind enough to take down the look-up as it 'violated' their policy... gee I wonder why.

So what is everyone doing?  Trying the credentials of course... on Facebook, Twitter, eBay, PayPal, GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. etc. etc...

The problem is that people, you the reader, my friends, family and everyone you know tend (almost always) to use the same username and/or email address and the password on most or all of the websites used.  This means if I, or anyone else gets a set of credentials from say, Gawker, Sony and now LulzSec and try these credentials on many of the popular websites... most likely the success rate will be high... VERY high.

So do yourself a favor and look into a password management tool that will remember your websites,  usernames and passwords for each site you frequent and use the tool to generate a random and unique password for every website you use.  So when the next credential breach occurs, you only need to worry about changing one password versus 10-20 that you might have.

I REALLY hope your banking, financial and health related passwords are nothing alike for your sake!

LastPass (My Fav) RoboForm, SuperGenPass and others are all solutions that will help you generate a uniquely different password for each website and remember them so you don't have to worry about having 20 different passwords.

• LastPass website
• RoboForm website
• SuperGenPass website

Gizmodo article on Lulz account and password leak