Showerthought: I realized my password strategy was a joke after my kid's school got hit with ransomware.

I used the same base password with slight variations for everything, thinking adding a '1!' made it secure, but the IT guy said that pattern is the first thing automated attacks check.

3 comments

3 Comments

alicehernandez9d ago

It's like when people hide a spare key under the doormat. Feels clever until you realize it's the first place everyone looks lol.

brian_smith69d ago

Alice has a point about the doormat being the first place you check. Parker_price is right that a long base password helps, but predictable patterns like "1!" at the end are exactly what automated scripts test first. They don't just guess one at a time, they run through every common variation. So that pattern might as well be part of the public password.

parker_price9d ago

But what if that simple pattern is actually good enough for most people? Not everyone is a high value target for hackers. If your base password is long and random, adding "1!" at the end might still be a huge pain for someone to crack just for your streaming account. The IT guy's job is perfect security, but for regular folks, a pattern you can remember that stops casual breaches is better than perfect passwords you write down on a sticky note.