03-09-22

This article on social engineering access to a friend’s account got me thinking…

The article and all of Alex’s articles (particularly his story about getting Tony Abbott’s passport) are highly entertaining while also being insightful on how much information you can get on people relatively easy.

Now to be honest, I feel like I already knew that - but that only applies to “regular” people who don’t take any precautions or use password123 as their password for everything.

But it had me thinking of the amount of reused passwords I have on random website one-off accounts I’ve created over the lifespan of my almost 10 year old email. What data do these hold that I’ve completely left on their most likely fragile security systems (I mean only in January 6M Twitter accounts leaked) that is sensitive data itself or rather data that helps gain further access to other more important accounts.

Out of all the family members emails I’ve tried in (https://haveibeenpwned.com), mine has by far been leaked the most. Almost scarily so (up to 2x the next closet).

1Password has been great with their watchtower feature to ensure my passwords for all accounts are secure by using HIBP’s API; so I plan to continue to use it to either delete or secure some of these accounts much better.