LOL So... the PSN hack claimed me as a victim...

If you've used the same password everywhere, and that password has been obtained by the hackers, then yes, you'll need to change it everywhere. Changing your e-mail password would protect your e-mail address, but your password would still be out there - thus making your other accounts vulnerable.

This happened to me a couple of years ago - I used the same password for each site and one got hacked with the users DB table being dumped online. The password was encrypted/hashed, but I still went ahead and changed my password on every site. Is a PITA, but is worth it IMO.

 

im not creative enough to come up with new passwords


should i be using a different password on all websites?

 

So I finally received the email from Sony at midnight last night - fat lot of good that did!

As said by Sloth, lesson well learnt.

Talledega, in theory you should use as many different passwords as possible.....just depends how far your patience goes!

 

Security-wise it is best to not use 1 password for every website. I mean, if you use the same password on 200 websites, it only takes 1 website to be hacked for your password to be out there.

What was suggested earlier about using a service such as LastPass or Roboform might be worth looking into. They have password generators and password DBs so you can have 100s of unique passwords without needing to remember any of them.

What I've tended to do is have a unique password for most forums and websites, but then one 'global' password which I use for low-priority sites (perhaps ones I'll only be using once, or very infrequently).

It is a PITA at times though

 

I have no idea which password I used, and no idea which credit/debit card I used. And obviously I can't log in to PSN to tentatively try out different combinations.

Sony ****ed this up royally ...

 

Or try to make a mental algorithm to make a randomish password for every site.

 

I read a good way of creating complex but easy to remember passwords somewhere (might even have been here) was to use something like, for example:

iutlan1bnilan16 - i used to live at number 1 but now i live at number 16

No help to those suffering from the PSN thing but thought i'd share for those syaing they have issues creating secure passwords.

 

You could also use a passage from a book as a password, add some @ instead of A, £ instead of E and so on and so forth.

Something like: l1ttl£m1$$mupp£t$@t0n@thup£t - little miss muppet sat on a tupet

 

2^10.38478375 ~ 36.5650106^2 ~ 1337, from memory.

It's not hard to remember a random string if you use it enough. I find the problem is that it drops out of your head if you don't recall it often. I use 3 basic small strings that I randomly generated and learned for all my passwords with two of them doubled up for more secure ones.

I should start tracking all my passwords so I can phase out the old ones every so often.

 

I finally got my email from sony, not a lot of information accepting responsibility. They started off by saying they were required by law to contact me and let me know my CC info was leaked. A little mad they are just sending this now after I have read about it plenty on blogs over the past week.

 

thanks for the tips...


i guess i will take the time to redo all my passwords. some have been the same for the past 8 years LOL

 

This. Plus, you don't even need to pay for it but I do so I can use the Droid App.