NEW DELHI: Many people re-use breached, unsafe credentials for sensitive financial, government..

and email accounts, putting their account at risk of hijacking by cybercriminals, according to tech giant Google. In a recent blog post, Google said hijackers routinely attempt to sign in to sites across the web with credentials exposed by third-party breaches.

If netizens use strong, unique passwords for all their accounts, this risk disappears, it said.

“Based on anonymous telemetry reported by the Password Checkup extension, we found that users reused breached, unsafe credentials for some of their most sensitive financial, government, and email accounts,” it added.

Cyber attackers often have wide-scale access to billions of stolen usernames and passwords.

The risk, as per Google, was even more prevalent in shopping sites (where users may save credit card details), news, and entertainment sites.

“In fact, outside the most popular web sites, users are 2.5X more likely to reuse vulnerable passwords, putting their account at risk of hijacking,” the blogpost said.
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