I received notice that a discussion forum used by Evernote to provide tech support has been hacked. A few years ago such a notice of a data breach might have caused panic. Today I feel not much else other than “another day another online hack”.
Why? The reason for this is I long ago gave up re-using any password on more than one site. Hackers in general are looking to compromise sites not so they can vandalize them — though that happens too — but more often so they can mine user names and passwords in hopes that the user has carelessly re-used them on another site. Once the hacker has a database of user names/passwords they might go over to a more important site like a bank or a Paypal account in hopes that the password used on one site was also used on the other.
There’s a really simple answer to this. Don’t reuse your password on any sites.
Instead you want to use password management software such as Lastpass ($12/year) which will automatically generate a unique password for every site you visit and then store that password inside it’s encrypted vault.
Is there a chance that Laspass could suffer a data breach? Perhaps. However I still view a solution like Lastpass as much safer than re-using the same password on multiple sites. Especially in this era where data breaches don’t even merit more than a passing mention.
For more information – visit Lastpass.com
