Risks of reusing passwords can leave you vulnerable to cyberattacks

There are many risks of reusing passwords, all of which can make you more vulnerable to cyberattacks. When serious data breaches occur and your personal information is exposed, victims who reuse passwords can be at a greater at risk of being targeted by cybercriminals.

For example, with the Virgin Media data breach, names, email addresses, and telephone numbers have been exposed in the breached. With criminals potentially having access to this information, they may be able to hack into accounts or attempt email phishing scams, or cold call scams. This will usually be to get personal information from the victims so they can access more of their online accounts. In this case, the risks of reusing passwords could be extremely high, leaving people at high risk of fraudulent activity.

Risks of reusing passwords

The risks of reusing passwords are fairly obvious. Doing this can make it easier for cybercriminals to gain access to more of your online accounts where you use the same credentials. If you use the same passwords at home as you do at work, this could also open a whole other risk factor to your business or employer as well.

These are major risks!

The risks of reusing passwords can be dangerous if hackers are then able to access your accounts. You could be vulnerable to fraudulent activity, cybercrime and even identity theft. This can be prevented by using a range of passwords that consist of both upper-and lower-case letters, numbers and special characters that are unique across all platforms you use.

It is important that you do not use easily guessable information in your passwords as well, such as names of family or friends, names of pets, or places of work. Any information that could be found by looking on social media accounts or on google should never then be used as part of access credentials either. The aim is to make each online password different, unique and as hard to guess as possible.

The Virgin Media data breach

The Virgin Media data breach affected over 900,000 people who had their personal data exposed online for a period of 10 months between April 2019 and February 2020. The breach was detected by an independent security researcher (TurgenSec), and Virgin Media has blamed the breach on an ‘incorrectly configured’ database resulting from employee error.

The online database was found to have been accessed by at least one unknown third-party during the 10 months it was available. This could leave victims vulnerable to cybercrime and phishing scams. If any victims have also reused passwords, they could be at a greater risk of being targeted.

Start your claim as soon as possible

If you have been affected by the Virgin Media data breach, it is important to start your claim as quickly as you can. We are already representing a large number of claimants for the data breach as part of the Virgin Media Group Action that we have launched.

Now is the time to join before any potential court deadline to join is set.

Our team of expert lawyers can offer you No Win, No Fee representation if you have an eligible claim. It is important that you get the justice that you deserve for having your data unfairly exposed by a reputable company.

We can fight for your right to justice – get started with a claim for compensation here.

The content of this post/page was considered accurate at the time of the original posting and/or at the time of any posted revision. The content of this page may, therefore, be out of date. The information contained within this page does not constitute legal advice. Any reliance you place on the information contained within this page is done so at your own risk.