Tuesday 19 February 2019

Wait, What?

I got an email alert yesterday that someone had signed on to an account from an unknown browser and if it wasn't me to change my password.

Well, usually when I get these it IS me but this time I figured it was most likely spam as the account in question was an EA gaming account and I don't own a gaming system.

But I decided to follow through anyway and the email seemed legit and so I went to their site (not via the email) and guessed at my account name and password and got in.  So... I guess I made an account with EA?  Probably for Origin for some game I used to play on my phone?

I changed passwords, even though I don't really play many games on my phone anymore but now I'm feeling pretty paranoid (as one should) and am wondering how on earth someone knew to "hack" an account I didn't even know I had.

I'm finding passwords particularly frustrating right now as I switched computers and manually transferred what passwords I could and I clearly missed a few or something, but now I feel like burning everything to the ground and never having another password ever!

Sigh.

I've also thought about getting a password manager type thing but then if I lose it (wherever it might be.. on a laptop or what have you) it's an awful lot of work to reset them all...

Which I guess is where the "bad guys" have us, eh?  Convenience vs frustration/effort.

2 comments:

Dominic said...

You can get password managers that are multi-platform - I use Lastpass, it's installed on my phone, on both my desktop browsers, on my tablet... I'm pretty confident I won't lose *all* of them at once :)

Victoria said...

I'm trying Dashlane (?) right now and not in love with it. Will take a look at Lastpass!