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Netflix and chill time has become synonymous with relaxation. And the streaming service is at the top of everyone’s list because it makes it simple to find every genre, every type of TV, movie, and cartoon-watching entertainment under the sun. But this is also the reason why so many hackers target Netflix (and other streaming services like Spotify).
This is the scary mistake you’re making when you log into Netflix, according to a security expert.
We understand how annoying it can be to try and remember 100 different passwords for all of your accounts. But one of the worst mistakes people make in terms of cybersecurity is using the same password for different accounts. Your Spotify password should never be the same as your Netflix password (which should never be the same as your bank account password, and so on).
According to Password Managers: “Using a combination of sophisticated techniques such as phishing attacks and advanced password cracking methods, hackers are able to get access to people's data. The number of fraudulent transactions continues to rise each year, and there’s a reason why. By using the same password across all online accounts, users give hackers easy access to their whole digital life. It's like leaving the keys under the doormat. If a hacker gains access to one user account, he or she can easily take over all online accounts and impersonate them.”
If a hacker figures out one of your passwords, it’s then dead easy to determine whether it is being used across other sites. Security experts always advise using “unique and strong passwords” for every account — this means a clever combination of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols.
If coming up with so many different strong passwords is intimidating, you can use a password manager service like Dashlane and iPassword to do the hard work for you. Otherwise, Lifehacker advises creating a password that is 12 characters or longer and consists of variations on capitalizations, spelling, numbers, and punctuation.
According to Lifehacker: “If you're curious whether your chosen password is secure or not, you can run it through an online password checker like the one at OnlineDomainTools. To highlight the importance of a lengthy, random, unique password, the online checker has specific fields to show your password's variation in characters, its appearance in dictionaries, and the time it would take for a brute force attack to crack it.”
