c/cybersecurity-tips

Rant: Blew $180 on a pentest course that taught me nothing real

I grabbed a $180 penetration testing bundle last spring from a guy with a big YouTube following. The labs were all pre-broken, so I never actually learned how to find a real vulnerability on my own network. Then I tried the same tricks on a client's setup and got nowhere for three weeks. Isn't the whole point of paying for training to save you time, not waste it? Anyone else regret a cyber course that looked great on paper but flopped in practice?

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robin_foster1•4d ago

Paid $40 for a "dark web scanner" that just Googled my name

Last month I saw an ad for a service that promised to scan the dark web for my info. Sounded cool so I dropped $40 on it. Got the report back and it literally just listed my old Yahoo email and a breach from 2016 that was all over the news. I could have done that with a free search. Anyone else wasted money on these so-called security tools that just scrape public data?

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joseph_hart•4d ago

That fake text from my 'bank' made me call my 70 year old uncle

Was telling my uncle about a scam text I got claiming my debit card was locked, and he goes 'oh yeah, I get those, I just reply STOP and they leave me alone.' Spent 20 minutes explaining that's not how it works and now he's got me triple checking his spam folder every Sunday. Has anyone else had to walk a family member through basic scam awareness lately?

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rivera.henry•12d ago

Hit 30 random password resets in one week, finally stopped ignoring my password manager

After my third lockout at a client site in Jacksonville, I actually counted the resets in my phone log and realized I was wasting more time on that than on payroll, so I spent 20 minutes setting up the manager and now I'm wondering why I fought it for two years, anyone else have that moment where the math finally got too embarrassing to ignore?

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david_stone•12d ago

That one audit comment about my log retention changed everything for me

Last month a client's auditor told me my 30 day log retention was 'a liability, not a feature' and I laughed it off at first. Then they showed me a breach scenario where forensic data would've been gone before we even noticed the intrusion. I moved all my critical logs to a $15 a month cold storage bucket with WORM settings, and now I sleep better knowing I can actually answer 'what happened on February 3rd at 2 AM' if I ever need to. Has anyone else had to fight their boss on the cost of longer retention, or am I the only one who got roasted by an auditor for being cheap?

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julia_fisher28•13d ago

Paid $120 for password manager, found out the free tier did everything

Last month I signed up for a premium password manager plan before checking if I actually needed it. I paid $120 upfront for a year, thinking the extra features like dark web monitoring and secure file storage were must-haves. Then a friend pointed out that the free version of the same service had unlimited passwords and syncing across devices, which was 95% of what I used. I called to cancel and they wouldn't refund, so now I'm stuck with a subscription I barely touch. Anyone else paid for a service without reading the fine print first?

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hart.ryan•13d ago

My 2FA backup code choice almost locked me out of my email

Last month I set up two-factor authentication on my main Gmail and had to pick between printing the backup codes or saving them in a password manager. I went with the password manager since I figured it was more convenient, but then my phone died and I couldn't access the manager without the phone number tied to it. Took me 3 days of jumping through recovery hoops to finally get back in, and now I keep a physical copy in my desk drawer. Has anyone else had a backup method fail at the worst possible time, and what do you use that actually works?

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coleman.jade•18d ago

2FA apps made me lazy, then I lost my backups

I used to preach that authenticator apps were the only way to go, but after 3 years of relying on them, I woke up to a dead phone and no recovery codes. All those accounts tied to Google Authenticator became locked out, and support tickets took days each. The before and after is night and day: I used to feel secure, now I just feel dependent on one device. Has anyone else ditched the pure app approach and gone back to hardware keys or printed codes?

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rivera.henry•21d ago

My password manager export broke everything, recovery mode saved me

Ngl, I tried switching from Bitwarden to another manager last month and the CSV export mangled all my special characters. Logged into my old vault after a panic and exported with the JSON format instead, fixed it in 20 minutes. Anyone else had export format issues when migrating?

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flores.tessa•22d ago

Pro tip: your phone's QR scanner is a phishing gateway

I watched my uncle scan a random QR code at a gas station off I-35 last month, and 10 minutes later his email was flooded with login alerts. People treat QR codes like they're invisible, but theyre just shortened links you cant preview. Malwarebytes flagged the payload after the fact, but by then his bank card was already frozen. Has anyone else seen QR scams pop up at restaurants or parking meters?

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kevin_bailey•22d ago

Got hit with a fake invoice scam at 6am, here's how I caught it

I was doing payroll for my crew in Portland last Tuesday and got an email that looked like it came from my insurance broker, same logo and everything. It said I owed $1,847 for a policy renewal and the payment link looked legit until I hovered over it. The domain was off by one letter, like insuracebrokers dot com instead of the real one. I called the broker directly and they confirmed it was a phishing attempt. Has anyone else seen these fake vendor invoice emails hit their business accounts, and what red flags do you check before clicking?

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angelaellis•22d ago

Airport security at JFK made me rage-quit traveling for a bit

I flew out of JFK last Friday and watched at least four people walk through the body scanner while openly holding their phones and boarding passes, and not one TSA agent said a word. Meanwhile, I had to take my laptop out, my shoes off, my belt off, and I got pulled aside because of a water bottle I swear I emptied. How are we supposed to take airport security seriously when the staff themselves is ignoring the rules? Has anyone else seen this slack behavior at their airport lately, or is it just me?

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simonbell•22d ago

Overheard a coworker say my password manager is overkill

Last week in the break room at our office in Columbus, a guy from accounting said he just uses the same password for everything because a breach 'hasn't happened to him yet.' He laughed at me for paying $36 a year for a password manager, and now I'm second-guessing whether I'm being paranoid or if he's just lucky. For those of you who've dealt with a real breach, did the extra setup actually pay off or am I wasting money?

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andrew_kelly•23d ago

That $14 USB drive from a flea market gave me a scare in Orlando

I grabbed a cheap USB stick at a flea market outside Orlando last month, figured it was fine for moving some photos. Plugged it into my laptop at a coffee shop and it auto-ran something, my antivirus lit up instantly. Turns out it had a hidden autorun script that tried to pull a keylogger. I yanked it out, ran a full scan, and ended up wiping my whole system just to be safe. Has anyone else gotten burned by random used storage, and do you ever trust them after that?

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flores.tessa•23d ago

The coffee shop router taught me more than 3 years of forums

Last Tuesday I was at a coffee shop in Portland waiting on a repair estimate. I noticed their guest WiFi was wide open, no password, no splash page, nothing. The barista told me they set it up 2 years ago and never touched it. I checked the router IP and the admin panel had the default login still active. I spent 10 minutes showing her how to lock it down, changed the password, turned off WPS, and renamed the network. That same week I read a post about a guy who got his bank drained because a coffee shop network was sniffing traffic. It made me realize how many small businesses are sitting ducks with zero clue. How do you convince a shop owner to care when they think security is just antivirus?

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sandralee•23d ago

Locked myself out of my email at 2am, got back in with a dumb trick

Was up late editing a presentation for a client pitch in Austin when my inbox suddenly flagged suspicious activity and forced a password reset. Problem was I had 2FA on my old phone number that I forgot to update after switching carriers last month. I panicked for 20 minutes until I remembered I had a backup recovery code saved in a note on my laptop from setup day. Used that to get in, changed my number and turned on app-based auth instead of SMS. Has anyone else had a near miss with stale recovery info? What backup method do you trust most?

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juliaa25•24d ago

Paid $180 for a password manager, family still uses sticky notes

Last January I bought a family plan for Bitwarden and spent a whole weekend setting up vaults for everyone. My wife and teenage son both said they'd use it, but I found three sticky notes under the keyboard last week with their login info. It wasn't the tool's fault, it was the habit change nobody wanted to make. Has anyone actually gotten their household to stick with a password manager, or do we all just give up eventually?

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troy_owens•25d ago

That coffee shop Wi-Fi in Austin almost got me

I was at a busy cafe off South Congress last week, logging into their 'free guest network' to check my bank app. Turned out the SSID was a spoofed hotspot set up right next to the real one, and my phone auto-connected to it before I noticed. Anyone else ever walked into a place and seen two identical network names, or am I just paranoid now?

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sandralee•25d ago

Got phished at a coffee shop in Austin, now I check URLs twice

I was answering emails on the free wifi at a Starbucks on South Congress and clicked a link in what looked like a Dropbox share from my boss. It took me to a fake login page that looked perfect, but my password manager refused to autofill, which was the only clue. I froze my accounts within an hour, but has anyone else had a close call where their password manager saved them?

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evannelson•26d ago

That Tuesday my 2FA app locked me out of my own email at a truck stop in Reno

Sat for 45 minutes in the parking lot of a Pilot in Reno trying to get a verification code from an app that decided to wipe itself after an update, and the recovery email was the same account I was locked out of, so has anyone else had to dig through old SIM card boxes to remember which backup codes they actually saved?

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parker_bailey•27d ago

Rant: my buddy's 'safe password' advice got me locked out for 3 days

My friend Dave, who works in IT, swore by using a passphrase with random symbols in the middle, like 'correct horse battery stapler!@#'. I set that on my bank app last Tuesday, then fat-fingered it twice and got flagged for fraud. The bank froze my account until Friday, and I couldn't pay my rent through their portal. Dave said this never happens if you write it down, but I kept it in a notes app that logged me out too. Anyone else had a 'smart' security tip backfire on them like this?

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rivera.henry•29d ago

Hit 200 unique passwords in my vault, that number scared me straight

I was cleaning out my password manager last weekend and saw the counter at 200. That's 200 different logins I've accumulated since college, and honestly I only use maybe 15 of them on a regular basis. The scary part is how many were duplicates or weak variations like the same word with a number tacked on the end. So I spent about 4 hours going through every single entry, deleting old accounts I don't even remember making, and resetting the ones I actually use with a generated passphrase. My rule now is if I haven't logged in within 2 years, it gets deleted or archived. Has anyone else hit a number like that and realized how much digital junk you're carrying around? What's your cutoff for keeping an old account alive?

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thea246•1mo ago

Talking to my aunt about password habits made me audit my own setup

She told me she uses the same password for everything because she 'doesn't have anything worth stealing.' Tbh, that hit different because I had two reused logins on my banking and email. Spent last Sunday fixing all 14 accounts with a free password manager, has anyone else convinced a family member to make the switch?

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flores.tessa•1mo ago

My password manager failed me in a Target parking lot

I trust my password manager with everything, but last Tuesday in the Target lot on El Camino Real my phone died and I couldn't get into my shopping app. Turns out I had been reusing the same 8 character password for 14 different accounts, including my bank and my pet store rewards card. The cashier saw my face and said 'you look like you just lost your wallet,' which is when I realized I needed a hardware key backup. Anyone else have a horror story about being locked out when your brain forgot the one thing you swore you'd remember?

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wade_hall•1mo ago

Finally convinced my coworker to stop clicking those fake virus popup ads after 3 weeks of nagging

He thought the "Microsoft Support" number was legit because it showed a blue screen, but once I showed him the same popup on 4 different websites during lunch break he finally got it, has anyone else had to train someone on basic browser safety?

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