My 140 reused passwords finally came back to bite me. Here’s how I fixed it

It’s famous online security lore that you shouldn’t reuse the same password across multiple accounts. But once upon a time, I was a naïve student who liberally ignored this rule, placing far too much trust in the companies that held my data. Fast forward to 2026, and those bad habits have come back to bite an older and wiser version of myself.

While I have long since stopped reusing passwords, the Ghost of Passwords Past decided to visit me when I was notified that my data had been exposed in a breach. And it ended up affecting a lot more than I expected.