Passwords are everywhere. They ensure that only we (or the persons we allow) are able to access our private information and belongings—be that money in the bank or social media identity. However, we often take them lightly, using the same password everywhere because it's easy to remember.

While many apps and services have gotten better in terms of security, hackers have also improved considerably. Using the same password everywhere puts you at risk of becoming a prime target for cyberattacks. There are other less obvious downsides of this practice.

Here are a couple of reasons why you should be more diligent when choosing a password.

1. Credential Stuffing Attacks

When it comes to using the same password everywhere, you are not alone. According to the NordPass website, a lot of people use easy-to-guess passwords like "guest" and "password." This is a horrible practice, as these seemingly counter-intuitive passwords barely take any time to crack.

If you're using a weak password like this on all your accounts, you're the perfect target for a credential-stuffing attack. This is a type of cyberattack that crams a large collection of stolen passwords or usernames into thousands of websites. If your recycled password makes its way into a data breach, a good number of your accounts can get in trouble.

2. Putting Your Corporate Accounts at Risk

In 2012, Dropbox suffered a breach that affected 69 million users online. According to The Guardian, the breach happened because of a Dropbox employee reusing the same password on Dropbox as he did previously on LinkedIn. When his LinkedIn account got hacked, hackers also got access to Dropbox's corporate network.

This means that if you recycle passwords for your corporate account, you're putting yourself and the corporation at a huge risk, too. That's exactly why many tech-savvy companies now are using password managers. Password managers allow you to store and generate secure passwords.

By adding your employee or contractor to your password manager, they gain access to all the accounts whose passwords are stored within the manager app, simplifying their login process—all while eliminating the need to share the password with them at all.

3. Easier to Guess With AI Tools

Reused passwords or even similar passwords are weak, not unique, and easily predictable. Hackers can easily crack such passwords using AI tools. Even the free ChatGPT version can be used to brainstorm such passwords:

If the prompt above is too simple to guess your password, hackers may bypass ChatGPT's restrictions and try to come up with a more personalized prompt to guess your passwords.

For example, I wrote a prompt, pretending to write a story about a fictional character, Adam (any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental), where hackers are trying to break into his Facebook account:

Here's how ChatGPT happily came up with a list of passwords that person may be using:

Some of these passwords sure appear funny, but we do actually tend to put passwords that we can easily remember (people and things we typically care about the most). So, the more the hackers know about us (which is not difficult given we put everything up on social media), the higher the chances of them guessing our password successfully.

And the advanced AI password-cracking tools are on another level. They test common passwords by using variations of words or passwords found in data breaches.

If you use a password like "qwerty", it takes password-cracking tools less than a second to crack it. Adding numbers and changing it to "qwerty12345" doesn't make it any harder to crack. A lot of tools look for a pattern, and obvious numbers in front of even more obvious phrases are the most common patterns.

4. Sharing Passwords Makes You More Vulnerable

Recycling your passwords is a bad practice, but sharing those reused passwords is even worse. No matter how trustworthy the person you're sharing the password is, you can't account for data breaches or cyberattacks. Your account is at even more risk if the person you have shared account details with has their device compromised or stolen.

Once a hacker gets access to a device, every account and piece of data is free for the taking. For example, let's say you share a Netflix account with someone. If their laptop gets hacked or stolen and someone gets into that Netflix account, your credit card details are immediately at risk.

So, first, use strong passwords that are hard-to-guess. Then, secondly, use two-factor authentication or a password manager to safely share a password with friends and family, and minimize the risk.

5. Social Engineering Attacks

Social engineering is the act of manipulating people to steal their private information. It's not really a technical skill, but more of a psychological play. Phishing links are the most common example of this.

It's no longer as simple as the phishing link leading you to a fake Facebook or Instagram login page. Hackers will pretend to be a friend, colleague, or trustworthy organization to get you to click on links that compromise your accounts.

So, the hacker may request you to sign up for their new startup service, only to see what password you use. In some cases, they might contact you from your friend's account that was compromised—most of us are none the wiser when opening links from our friends, so this is an easy trap to set up.

Since you would most likely be reusing a password from elsewhere to sign up for that service, they'll try to use that password for all your accounts they know about. If you use the same password for your banking app, you're likely in for a world of trouble.

If not every time, this technique would work in most instances.

6. Increased Risk of Insider Attacks

Reusing the same passwords everywhere potentially increases the risks of insider attacks. Suppose an employee who knows the password leaves your organization. If the password is unchanged, the former employee will still have easy access to all your sensitive data.

If the insider knows a password that's been used everywhere, all your apps and services are at immediate risk. They can use these credentials to conduct fraudulent activities, exploit vulnerabilities, or harm computer systems. Such people can also pretend to be staff and manipulate colleagues into sharing confidential information.

Similarly, if the same password is used across multiple websites, it would be difficult to pinpoint the insider in case of any unwanted or malicious activity. You can reduce the risks of insider attacks by adopting strong security practices. A good place to start is giving custom credentials to all your employees.

Be Creative, Secretive, and Strict With Passwords

No matter what other security measures you take, your online presence will always be at risk if you reuse the same password across different platforms. Sure, reused passwords are easier to remember, but you'll regret that convenience if your accounts get hacked.

Fortunately, you might not need to use passwords in the future at all. Services like Apple PassKeys use biometric authentication like FaceID or TouchID to log you into accounts. This removes the need for a password, as the service uses a cryptographic key instead. As other companies start to implement this, passwords might become a thing of the past.