A lot of big sites has lousy security. This means that if you reuse your passwords, there are a pretty good chance that you will end up having your password stolen.
The road to your life getting stolen goes something like this:
- You sign up a poker forum.
- A hacker steal the user database from the forum – This means he has your email and the password you used at the forum.
- The hacker now try to get access to you email address and every other account that looks like it is associated with you, using the password he got from the forum.
After 3 weeks of him getting access to your email address he simultaneously change the information on all your important accounts, and try to withdraw all the money he can get his dirty little hands on.
Regardless of what happens now, you will probably end up spending the next 2 weeks picking up the scraps and trying to get the people at your local police station to get you in touch with a cybercrime department so they can track down the bastard.
Avoid Bad Stuff Happening to You
To prevent this from happening to you, all you need to take some precautions.
- Use separate passwords for all your accounts. No exceptions!
- Use separate email addresses for your accounts, or at least create a separate one for everything that is connected with your important accounts.
This can get messy really fast, so most people use a password manager, which makes it really easy. There are a couple of different ones, I use Roboform on my PC and KeePass on my Mac.
If you want to know more about online security Nat Arem has written a really good guide that is definitely worth a read.