15 June 2021

Why Are People Reusing Passwords in 2021?

Because no one will bother about me and my favorite password. Intuit notifies customers of hacked TurboTax accounts

So people reuse passwords. And somewhere, one of the places that they use their one password got hacked. So the bad guys went searching for where else do you use that PW.

And they found a treasure trove of data in TurboTax.

The company's investigation revealed that the threat actors used credentials (usernames and passwords) obtained from "a non-Intuit source" to gain access to the accounts.

"By accessing your account, the unauthorized party may have obtained information contained in a prior year's tax return or your current tax return in progress, such as your name, Social Security number, address(es), date of birth, driver's license number and financial information (e.g., salary and deductions), and information of other individuals contained in the tax return," Intuit explained.

That is everything they need to

  1. steal your identity,
  2. file fraudulent tax returns (the IRS has no sense of humor),
  3. report income under YOUR Social Security Number so you have to pay the tax on their income,
  4. Etc.

Use a damn password manager. I am currently recommending either Bitwarden or 1Password. I don't have experience with either, but they are both recommended by people I respect. I use KeePass, but if you are not using a PW manager today, you are NOT tech savvy enough for KeePass. (I manage my own off-site backups. It isn't hard, but it isn't' trivial, and if you get it wrong, you are SOL.)

Why do I care if you get your life turned upside down? Because your lack of attention to the simple details of 2021 is costing me real money in terms of the higher fees we all get charged. Also, stupidity offends me on deep and personal level.

1 comment:

  1. pencil and paper looks better all the time.

    ReplyDelete

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