Hackers love your zombie accounts
How many online accounts have you made over the years? 50? 100? More? That’s enough to fill a digital graveyard.
A new study shows that 25% of all online accounts are never used again, but they don’t just disappear. They sit there, wide open, with your email address and password attached. These forgotten logins are called “zombie accounts,” and hackers love them.
Why? Because most people reuse passwords or use easy-to-crack ones. And those old accounts? They’re missing security updates, have no two-factor authentication, and usually are linked to your main email address.
💥 Easy takeover
Here’s the scary part: Hackers use a method called credential stuffing. It’s lazy but effective. Basically, bots test your old usernames and passwords across thousands of popular sites: Gmail, Netflix, Amazon, even your bank.
If they hit a match (and they often do), you’re toast. They can steal your identity, drain your accounts or hold your data for ransom.
What’s worse? These attacks happen 24/7, using bots that can test thousands of logins per second. One weak link, one zombie account and they’re in.
Great, now they’re logging into your PayPal while you’re still trying to remember if it’s passwordDog! or Dogpassword!
You can go through all your accounts one by one to kill off those you don’t use, but that’s a hassle and you won’t do it.
🚫 Passwords in your browser
Think your browser’s built-in password manager will save you? Nope. It’s lame, really.
If someone gains access to your device even for a minute in person or via malware, they can unlock all your saved logins in Chrome, Safari or Edge with little effort. Worse, your browser won’t warn you if your passwords have been leaked online or on the dark web.
How I stopped scammers cold
“Kim, Lifelock has gotten so expensive. Do I even need it?” — Matt in Texas
I’ve been hearing this a lot, Matt. I agree, LifeLock is pricey. My bill was $239.88 a year. Now, I’m paying $62.64 a year, that’s a 74% savings! More about that later.
184 million accounts just leaked, yours could be next
Hackers just hit a massive jackpot: 184 million accounts across Apple, Google and Microsoft were exposed in a sweeping data breach. I’m talking email addresses, usernames, passwords, device info (the whole buffet), now up for grabs on the dark web.
These passwords take 1 second to crack
Here’s a wild stat: 78% of the world’s most common passwords can be cracked in less than a second. The most-used password in the world, “123456,” has been leaked more than 3 million times. And get this: 1.2 million of those were corporate passwords.
My top password manager pick has an A+ security feature built in
But there’s a smarter way to protect your online accounts — using a trusted password manager like NordPass.
Remembering complex, unique passwords for every single account is practically impossible. If you’re like most people, you probably end up reusing passwords or writing them down somewhere, which isn’t your best bet if you value security.