Password security

Weak or shared passwords are a big security hazard. When a major website gets hacked, sometimes this results in hackers getting a hold of users' passwords. What they will do next is try those logins and passwords (rapidly, using automation) on many other websites. If you use the same password (or a very similar password) on many websites, and one of them gets hacked, many of your accounts can be at risk.

Using a password manager might be the simplest and most convenient thing you can do to improve your personal security online. A password manager remembers all of your passwords for you and stores them all in an encrypted archive that only you can open using a single master password. Your master password should be a strong password that you can remember. Since you no longer have to remember all of them, your other passwords can be really long, can use random characters, and can be completely unique per site. Long passwords are also harder to guess, even with automated tools, so this makes them more secure.