This is a frightening (but not at all uncommon) story of one man’s nightmare hacking experience. Yes, it’s a pain, but, man, if you don’t have different passwords on different website then it’s time to start. There are good, simple ways to accomplish site-specific passwords… you can find them at places like Lifehacker, that provide all kids of good advice. Farhad Manjoo also wrote a piece called Fix Your Terrible, Insecure Passwords in Five Minutes and offers good tips for .
Seriously, protect yourself or end up with your life upside down:
In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages. And worst of all, my AppleID account was broken into, and my hackers used it to remotely erase all of the data on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook.
In many ways, this was all my fault. My accounts were daisy-chained together. Getting into Amazon let my hackers get into my Apple ID account, which helped them get into Gmail, which gave them access to Twitter. Had I used two-factor authentication for my Google account, it’s possible that none of this would have happened, because their ultimate goal was always to take over my Twitter account and wreak havoc. Lulz.
