Why you should never reuse passwords

The story

It all happened a few years ago. As many others like me, I was heavily involved in the net, from purchasing things online to using many online services, like video games, social media, or the like.

I still do not know where or how my details were stolen, but the finding out part was quite traumatic, as I found out my credit card was not working anymore when making purchases internationally. All the various services I paid for with that card were starting to complain I was not paying their monthly fee and I had to do what most people dread, call my bank.

That is when I found out my card had been blocked, because they saw purchases made in my name with it that were quite suspicious: in Walmart somewhere in the US, when I was firmly residing in Finland and had never travelled there.

I was a lucky one because my bank saw the purchases and blocked them, so there were no financial consequences to me personally, but to this day I still receive plenty of phishing emails that claim to know my password.

I was one of the stupid ones that used the same password for basically everything, but I think I'm in good company there. Luckily for me, this scare was enough to push me to change my habits, and now I have a system in place; I changed all my passwords to all my numerous accounts scattered through the internet, started using NordVPN, and took advantage of 2-form authentication where possible.

I know I'm not 100% secure as no one ever is, but since then, there has not been any such incident, and I feel quite a bit more secure.