this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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I'm in the process of doing that. It's not a quick and easy process. I was so lazy with password, that I would just use a variation of 3 different passwords for everything because that's all I could remember. Then I had a password exposed, so I decided to change all my passwords to unique passwords and use a password manager. I was shocked to see that I had 126 passwords saved in my browser. That took a long time to go through and change the email and passwords to everything.
I totally understand you. It's indeed quite an enormous task.
I've been on the internet for 20 years, and just like you I used to use the same username, email, and password for everything. Slight variations for some stuff, but generally the same.
A couple of years ago, I took the problem by the root, and went into my browser's saved passwords, which I've migrates over a couple of times from Chrome and Firefox.
I was shocked to find over 1200 unique entries, scattered over so many sites. Many of them I did not even recognize.
I took it from the top and went down the list. Every site I would open, sign in to, and then change the password. If the site did not exist any longer, I would just remove it. If the site looked spammy, I would delete my account. If I couldn't find a way to delete my account, I would change the email.
Took me around 3 days to get through the list. There were quite a few duplicates, but also many that just didn't exist. Ended up with around 500 entries, which I then exported and out into my new password manager Bitwarden.
It feels good getting it done, but I also understand it's a daunting task. To me it was fun to relieve some of the memories from my childhood.