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Poll: Do you use the same password for everything?

The ‘WannaCry2′ ransomware attack has hit more than 200,000 victims.

COMPANIES ARE ON high alert this morning as people return to work three days after a malicious software started causing extensive damage.

The ‘WannaCry2′ ransomware attack has hit more than 200,000 victims at banks, hospitals and government agencies in more than 150 countries.

HSE staff have been told not to log in on their computers for two hours after they turn them on.

As part of online safety against attacks, people are advised to use different passwords for different services.

So today we’re asking, do you use the same password for everything?


Poll Results:

I use a few but they do overlap  (6341)
No  (3617)
Yes  (3209)
I use a password manager  (429)

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73 Comments
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    Mute Dublin Rover
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    May 15th 2017, 10:21 AM

    I’m pretty sure anyone who does use the same password shouldn’t vote in this poll

    235
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    Mute TradingDuck
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    May 15th 2017, 10:24 AM

    @Dublin Rover: I use the same password – and have had no regrets so far

    114
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    Mute Criodán Ó Murchú
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    May 15th 2017, 10:37 AM

    @Dublin Rover: I use the same password. It’s over 20 digits long, with numbers, letters and symbols. I don’t think any hacker would be interested in me and the average joe cannot access my stuff.

    82
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    Mute Lily
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    May 15th 2017, 10:43 AM

    @Criodán Ó Murchú:

    The thing is, I thought that too. However after a breach in a website that has your password and email details, it is sold on. The person who buys it then has all the info to log into all the sites you use, PayPal being a prime target. If that email and password are used, they have access to your PayPal account and to your c/c stored on your PayPal account. Once in they can wreak havoc.

    My PayPal account was used 101 times in 13 days by someone who had no interest in the average joe.

    79
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    Mute Bunny Johnson
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    May 15th 2017, 10:45 AM

    @Dublin Rover: Having different passwords can be less secure as people tend to write them somewhere. Password managers are the answer until they get backdoored by US agencies. Then we all buggerd.

    19
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    Mute William Grogan
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    May 15th 2017, 12:36 PM

    @TradingDuck: Said the chap who jumped off the Empire State when he passed the 10th floor.

    2
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    Mute The Sagacious Man
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    May 15th 2017, 2:12 PM

    @Bunny Johnson:
    Surely US Agencies would never allow their backdoor hacks to become available on the net! :-)

    7
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    Mute Rock Stoneballs
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    May 15th 2017, 2:49 PM

    @Criodán Ó Murchú:

    Pop your email address in here:

    https://haveibeenpwned.com/

    If there’s no results you’re either the luckiest person alive or full of sh!t.

    9
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    Mute Billy McNamara
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    May 15th 2017, 3:00 PM

    @Rock Stoneballs: Pop my email into your set up account.Get lost chancer.What a way to try and get info.Good try though.

    5
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    Mute Rock Stoneballs
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    May 15th 2017, 3:03 PM

    @Billy McNamara: Are you braindead?

    Firstly, that’s an immensely famous site for checking attacks, and secondly what good would his email address be?

    9
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    Mute Billy McNamara
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    May 15th 2017, 3:39 PM

    @Billy McNamara: Who the hell are you to encourage people to divulge any info to a site YOU put on a comment site.And by the way use a proper name,chancer.

    2
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    Mute Sean Claffey
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    May 15th 2017, 5:33 PM

    I think Billy might be a bit of a pleb.

    6
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    Mute Fionn Condren
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    May 15th 2017, 5:34 PM

    @Rock Stoneballs: a great site to check if your email address has been part of an attack, It gives detailed dates of the leaks/attacks too so you can see if you need to update your passwords. Although it doesn’t cover all leaks it’s a good starting point to show you how using the same set of passwords across the web can be dangerous and leave you vulnerable for an attack, account takeover or unauthorised payments being taken from a service like PayPal.. use different passwords when you can, even if just for banking, finance & social sites and try to turn on Multi-factor authentication on as many sites as possible… Microsoft, Google, Dashlane, LastPass and plenty of others have great tools to help you

    5
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    Mute Billy McNamara
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    May 15th 2017, 7:50 PM

    @Sean Claffey: Ha,ha, thanks Sean.

    2
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    Mute Charles Williams
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    May 15th 2017, 8:36 PM

    @Dublin Rover: I use a number of passwords but have difficulty remembering which one applies to what website and keep getting them mixed up. So the one password of a ancient Chinese philosopher is not such a bad idea. Zen-Gen-Xongzetru. I hope my spelling is ok.

    1
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    Mute Giovanni Casermaggio
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    May 15th 2017, 8:43 PM

    @Dublin Rover: no ..I do use the same password

    1
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    Mute RJ.Fallon
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    May 16th 2017, 9:44 AM

    @Charles Williams: I have different ones for every account,but I write them all down on paper cant get them mixed up or forget them that way.

    1
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    Mute Jimmy Casey
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    May 15th 2017, 10:24 AM

    “If you do, please enter password in the comments”

    89
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    Mute Just Himself
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    May 15th 2017, 10:26 AM

    @Jimmy Casey: hunter2

    15
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    Mute Cathal
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    May 15th 2017, 10:30 AM

    password1

    54
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    Mute B9xiRspG
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    May 15th 2017, 12:46 PM

    @Jimmy Casey: 1234567890

    9
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    Mute Allen Nicholson
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    May 15th 2017, 2:11 PM

    letmein

    7
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    Mute Guybrush Threepwood
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    May 15th 2017, 3:05 PM

    @Jimmy Casey: I use my name, but none of you craters know it. Once, my credit card details were compromised but my neighbour’s a Guard and he said, ‘Diarmuid, even if you used different passwords for everything, it wouldn’t make a difference’.

    23
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    Mute Lily
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    May 15th 2017, 10:38 AM

    I used a couple of passwords as there were too many to remember. A year or so ago email was broken into and a received a google notification to change my password as my account had be compromised. So I did. However I reused the same password on my PayPal account (it was an off the wall really wacky password (numbers, symbols, lower and higher case letters with no order)) and I didn’t realise but it may have been my old adobe account (which I completely forgot about as it was 8 or so years old).

    Any how last January I saw my c/c account balance and it was way out, someone had unlawfully accessed my PayPal and went on a spending spree over 13 days. I didn’t get notifications cause my PayPal was linked to a barely used email address, that I only checked if I bought something. I immediately contacted my bank and PayPal and was fully refunded a few days later.

    I don’t know how the hell they got my password and can only imagine it was linked to the adobe breach years ago. Since my husband is a software engineer our pcs are as protected as they can be and virus checked regularly.

    I now have a different unique password for everything and will change them every year.

    I learn d the hard way, don’t reuse old passwords.

    70
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    Mute John
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    May 15th 2017, 10:49 AM

    @Lily: cool story bro

    46
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    Mute Lily
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    May 15th 2017, 10:54 AM

    @John:

    Not so! They maxed out my C/C.

    I was lucky that the pattern they used to steal my money was stereotypical. The ip address they used was foreign. If it was from an IP address I previously used I wouldn’t have got my money back.

    If you google PayPal and fraud you will see that it’s a common occurrence. Some get money back, others don’t.

    20
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    Mute Jazz Buckler
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    May 15th 2017, 11:01 AM

    @Lily: use LastPass. It’s great. You can have unique mega complex pwds for all your sites and only have to remember one master pwd.. it auto fills them for you
    plus it auto fills all those annoying forms name address email etc

    11
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    Mute Ian Oh
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    May 15th 2017, 10:43 AM

    Yeah I do all the time. it is: imsickandtiredofthesestupidjournalpolls

    46
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    Mute deisecelt
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    May 15th 2017, 11:05 AM

    @Ian Oh: me too its whydoyoubotherclickingonthelinkso,isitjusttobitchandmoan

    65
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    Mute Ian Oh
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    May 15th 2017, 12:00 PM

    @deisecelt: I’m changing mine to: haveyounosenseofhumour.

    22
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    Mute Bunny Johnson
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    May 15th 2017, 10:43 AM

    What’s password got to do with it? Issue was a tool created by the US Government attacked machines with a vulnerability. They didn’t use passwords.

    31
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    Mute Joe Arthur
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    May 15th 2017, 11:27 AM

    @Bunny Johnson: IT security in general is a hot topic in the news right now, I guess that’s why. It’s good to get it talked about, many people don’t realise how much they can be exposing themselves, be it using repeat passwords, or old operating systems

    10
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    Mute cortisola
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    May 15th 2017, 11:49 AM

    @Bunny Johnson: Red herring Bunny – they want us to think we’re safe while we’re not. It’s like keeping your money in bank being safer (and handier for government to use them if needed).

    5
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    Mute P.J. Nolan
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    May 15th 2017, 12:40 PM

    @cortisola:
    Take your meds please.

    4
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    Mute cortisola
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    May 15th 2017, 1:51 PM
    1
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    Mute The Sagacious Man
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    May 15th 2017, 2:16 PM

    @Joe Arthur:
    Or old unpatched operating systems and the same password for everything, so if they plant a bot to pick up the password anywhere, they get access to everything at once…

    3
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    Mute DaisyChainsaw
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    May 15th 2017, 10:47 AM

    Where did passwords feature in the weekend hack? It would be better to ask have you updated your security.

    21
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    Mute Mark Fields
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    May 15th 2017, 10:41 AM

    Many experts recommend keeping your password “unique” this works well when 6 characters are needed.

    19
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    Mute The Duke of Fluke
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    May 15th 2017, 11:24 AM

    Telling the world that you use the same password for everything – in a comment linked to a twitter or facebook profile – not a great idea.

    17
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    Mute Gerard
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    May 15th 2017, 10:48 AM

    A big problem for me is companies having unreasonable security requirements of passwords. A password eight characters long with mix case and numbers and special characters, is harder to remember but LESS SECURE than a password of 5 randomly-chosen (!) English words (so not a sentence). You’ll notice the biggest most reputable companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook don’t have these arbitrary requirements because they make users more inclined to reuse a password and only perform simple easy to guess substitution for these “magical” characters the appearance of which instantly make a password more “secure”. (l » 1 or !, o » 0 etc​.)

    12
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    Mute Sean
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    May 15th 2017, 8:37 PM

    @Gerard: I think you’re wrong there.

    2
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    Mute Gerard
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    May 16th 2017, 2:11 AM

    @Sean: That’s nice. About the maths I’m certainly not. Assuming users choose a TRULY random combination (which they never are) of letters and numbers there are
    52 letters + 10 digits + about 10 commonly chosen special characters. That gives you 72 to the power of 8 possibilities.

    5 randomly chosen English words from the 10,000 most common words gives you 10,000 to the power of 5 combinations. Brute force still has to exhaust all the possible combinations of words and 5 random words have over 100,000 TIMES more combinations than those letters and symbols. And this is a conservative estimate because even the 10,000th most common English word is still a very common word: “poison”. Words being common does not make a password insecure as long as their combination is unpredictable.

    1
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    Mute Ben Staves
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    May 15th 2017, 12:11 PM

    I’ve been using ‘password123′ for ALL online accounts, including banking. I’ve never been hacked so not going to change them now!

    11
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    Mute Ted Logan
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    May 15th 2017, 11:27 AM

    I love the Journals feature that will hide your password if you type it into a comment by mistake – try it!

    ***************

    11
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    Mute Jim
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    May 15th 2017, 12:04 PM

    @Ted Logan: letmein

    3
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    Mute Jim
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    May 15th 2017, 12:04 PM

    @Ted Logan: Oh no it didn’t work

    9
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    Mute Pat D'Arcy
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    May 15th 2017, 12:05 PM

    @Ted Logan: **********

    2
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    Mute Pat D'Arcy
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    May 15th 2017, 12:05 PM

    Can’t believe it actually worked!

    7
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    Mute padraig
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    May 15th 2017, 10:57 AM

    One should not use admin/account when going on the Ethernet just a local a/CC or user /account. Check you antivirus software is updated and do full scan on laptop once a week, and juick scan daily.

    6
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    Mute The Sagacious Man
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    May 15th 2017, 2:20 PM

    @padraig:
    Use a sandboxed browser like sandboxie, so no malicious downloads survive.
    Create encrypted full backups and incrementals, store them off your machine (not on the same network) and test that the restore works.

    3
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    Mute Jim
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    May 15th 2017, 11:28 AM

    LastPass works for me across platforms…

    6
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    Mute cortisola
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    May 15th 2017, 11:52 AM

    @Jim: Who is LastPass @Jim?

    1
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    Mute Jim
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    May 15th 2017, 12:03 PM

    @cortisola: It’s an app/browser add on that creates and saves passwords across devices. https://lastpass.com/getlastpass1.php?n=1&mcomb=sa8Igu52I|139366419531|lastpass|e|i8rbbhb5l0|c&cvosrc=ppc.google.lastpass&cvo_campaign={campid}&cvo_crid=139366419531&Matchtype=e&gclid=Cj0KEQjwo-XIBRCOycL7hsuI_NoBEiQAuS6HtO5b2rJW3Dv10AsF5f0W0YzTp_eKDXwcwcz4fnjsoM0aAofx8P8HAQ

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    Mute John S
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    May 15th 2017, 12:14 PM
    4
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    Mute cortisola
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    May 15th 2017, 6:35 PM

    @Jim: What you show us here is just website address – anyone can do it. Do you know who are people from LastPass? Can you trust them ?

    2
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    Mute Neal Ireland Hello.
    Favourite Neal Ireland Hello.
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    May 15th 2017, 11:43 AM

    Do not respond to this poll. It is clearly a phishing exercise.

    6
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    Mute Catherine Sims
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    May 15th 2017, 11:20 AM

    No and I can never remember any of the decking things. I spent so much time resetting passwords for access to stupid things.

    11
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    Mute John O'Driscoll
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    May 15th 2017, 1:04 PM

    I use a password manager and the password for that is quite an Epic.

    4
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    Mute Fiona Fitzgerald
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    May 15th 2017, 9:05 PM

    @John O’Driscoll: I used to work in a place where you had to get three questions right before logging in. In Latin, for the crack. There’s always worse :-)

    3
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    Mute B9xiRspG
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    May 15th 2017, 12:50 PM

    I use lastpass password manager, pretty good as it will change passwords on the more popular sites automatically, on others or will generate a new password for you, you must do the change yourself.

    It works on my laptop and phone

    4
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    Mute Ken Pepper
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    May 15th 2017, 12:57 PM

    Yep
    Hothunk4u
    Does the trick

    4
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    Mute patrick o keeffe
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    May 15th 2017, 4:01 PM

    Hate this new thing of most sites looking for a mix of upper and lower case and a special symbol,a lower case word with a number at the end is fine.

    4
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    Mute Alois Irlmaier
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    May 15th 2017, 12:56 PM

    Like Clintons DNC using the password that was PASSWORD and then blaming Russian hackers when it was a teenager nearer to her than Putin.
    What gob… would use that password???

    4
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    Mute kehe
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    May 15th 2017, 5:12 PM

    You don’t need to remember any passwords. Generate and store them in a password vault (simple, secure software like Lastpass), secure it with one master password plus 2 step authentication (second ID like SMS). Never 100% secure but no need to be an easy target.

    3
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    Mute Clark Griswold
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    May 15th 2017, 1:28 PM

    I use the same password for everything. My logic on it is if they get access to your PayPal for example they might as well have access to everything else because the information is the exact same whether it be social media or whatever else you have signed up to! Just use a high strength password to begin with!

    3
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    Mute Sean
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    May 15th 2017, 8:41 PM

    @Clark Griswold: Your logic is flawed I’m afraid. I would suspect your logic could be summed up by I’m right and everyone else is wrong.

    2
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    Mute Eddie Turbo
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    May 15th 2017, 1:51 PM

    Very simple method to remember your password yet keep it different across all sites.

    If your car reg is for example 142D2300 then use 142 – then first two letters of website – then D – then 2300 – then # (whatever special character you want. Then repeat.

    Example for http://www.aib.ie is – ’142aiD2300#’ ….ensures always different for all sites but includes alpha numeric upper and lower with special character and over 8 characters! AND you never have to write it down.

    3
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    Mute Whitsun Healy-RaeNua
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    May 15th 2017, 2:28 PM

    @Eddie Turbo: So you use your password on all sites – then one of those sites gets hacked. Now the hacker has access to all of your other sites with the same password…

    Not so clever when you think about it…

    4
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    Mute John O'Driscoll
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    May 15th 2017, 2:57 PM

    Just modify a Fourier transform to work like a Sieve of Eratosthenes on sinusoids instead of Primes and then use it to isolate the wave length of any wave that starts from the smallest of N-skip overs and use that as the key to encipher the prayer you wrote for your first Communion to generate your LastPass Master password and you should be grand.

    Provided nobody remembers the prayer you wrote for your First Communion it was quite good the priest was impressed and you got loads more money from the relies as a result. Any of them might remember plus the priest ya have to keep an eye on them lads fierce fond of getting Her hands on her money the Church even if it was 1976 and nowadays he probably can’t remember what he had for breakfast.

    8
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    Mute Sport Billy
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    May 15th 2017, 4:53 PM

    Yes and its qwerty123 and my email address aloneinballymoon@gmail.com.. add me!

    2
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    Mute Fiona Fitzgerald
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    May 15th 2017, 9:01 PM

    Where’s the option for “I don’t know”? This is the one poll where it’d be apt!

    1
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