I recently wrote about the work I did to change every single password I had into ones that were unique for every site, and far more difficult to brute-force due to their long and randomized nature. As part of this exercise, I was essentially trying to change 250 passwords on 250 websites as quickly as possible. When you do this, you end up seeing trends and patterns across unrelated sites that you might not have noticed otherwise. Observations Here are some of the patterns I observed about how websites manage passwords:

I learned at a relatively young age what makes a good password versus a bad password, and I’ve tried to always use these qualities in the passwords that I choose. The Problem Unfortunately, even with the best intentions, you inevitably end up re-using one or a few passwords across every single website you log into. Some people do things as dumb as using the name of their significant other. Or their pet. Or a birthdate. Or something else equally guessable by one of the many supercomputers that exist (whereby “supercomputer”, I mean pretty much any computer invented in the past 5–7 years).