At my last speaking engagement I was talking about the importance of having various username and passwords when a woman said “Oh that’s just too much work.”

Unfortunately, that was not the first time I have heard those words from an audience member.  In fact it is this way of thinking that keeps me in business.

Technology has made us all lazy at the expense of our privacy.  People would rather just use one simple easy to use and easy to remember username and password for all of their online accounts.  Doing so allows data thieves to access all of your online accounts.  A year or so ago LinkedIn suffered a data security breach when usernames and passwords were stolen by a hacker.  The hacker was having difficulty breaking the encryption so he asked for assistance online by posting the encrypted file.  Many were able to decrypt the file giving them full access to the usernames and passwords.  This is where it gets interesting.  The hackers did just use the code to access the LinkedIn accounts they also used the information on numerous popular websites such as Dropbox.  Guess what – they are able to log in to accounts because the LinkedIn username and password were the same as the Dropbox username and password.

Another area where people are willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience is with privacy policies and terms of service (TOS) agreements.  It truly amazes me that people eagerly download and install software and apps without first reading the privacy policy and TOS.  If you do not read them then you have no idea what the company is going to do with your information.  Remember when Google decided to merge all of its services into one so you only had to have one account?  Remember the backlash over their privacy policy and TOS?