Dangers of password sharing and how to prevent them

You and a colleague of yours work on one project? You ask him to send you the client’s password and within a few seconds you see it in your email inbox?

Easy? Yes. Secure? Not at all.

81% of data breaches in companies happen due to poorly managed passwords. Getting to know the dangers of password sharing, and building the right password management habits can save your data, reputation and lots of money.

Passwords, when being shared out of habit, without complying with basic security rules, can put the user into great privacy and security risks. Usually people face the biggest dangers of password sharing in these practises:

Plain text passwords

When sharing an unencrypted password in a plain text, not only you make yourself more prone to a data breach, but also, in case it happens, your data can get easily lost ( as it is super simple to reveal it).
Sharing via social media chats, emails or Slack

These platforms were never created for sharing highly sensitive data. They lack advanced features (such as proper encryption) that would ensure protection of your data. Therefore, sharing any sensitive data in such channels can put you at an extreme risk.
Paradox of a hidden password

You really need to share a password with a person you don’t entirely trust. You’re sure he won’t see your password if it is behind the asterisks… Well, it’s not how this works. In fact, there’s no way to share a password so that a person won’t see it in the end (although so many tools claim otherwise). Keep that in mind when you share passwords that contain personal information or… are reused elsewhere.
Sharing reused passwords

Let’s say you ( among 65% of other internet users) share a password which you are using in another account as well. If a shared password becomes exposed during a cyber attack, all the other accounts, protected with the same password, become compromised too.

However, there are secure practises that minimize the dangers of password sharing, that are widely recommended by cyber security specialists. And that is to store and share passwords via encrypted password manager.

In a reliable password manager, all the data you store and send is encrypted and 24/7 guarded against any potential breaches. When you share a password in a password manager, only you and the person you share it with are able to see it.

Plus, it’s super easy to generate new complex passwords so that you can forget sharing reused passwords for good.

Finally, leave all the dangers of password sharing behind – no more reused passwords, no more plain text passwords, and no more risking your security by sharing them via chats and emails.

The solution is out there, we just need to start using it.

Go ahead and try out PassCamp – a password manager built for secure password sharing – for free today.