G
18

A friend's phone call made me delete my autofill passwords last night

My buddy Dave in Cleveland called me after his bank account got drained because someone got into his phone and used the saved passwords. He said it took him 2 hours on hold to freeze everything and he lost $600 before they caught it. I always thought autofill was just a convenience thing, but hearing the panic in his voice hit different. I spent the next hour turning off autofill and writing my important logins in a physical notebook I keep in my desk drawer. Anyone else ditch autofill after a close call, or do you trust your phone's security that much?
1 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In
1 Comment
mason.keith
Gotta admit I still have autofill on for like half my stuff, mostly because my password for everything is either "sunshine" or some variation of my cat's name from 2012. I tried the notebook approach once but then I lost the notebook and spent a weekend locked out of my own email while my cat sat there judging me. Dave's story is genuinely scary though, I never thought about someone grabbing my phone at a bar and just having the keys to my whole life handed to them. I've started at least turning off autofill for banking and anything with money, that feels like a reasonable middle ground. How do you handle the passwords you don't want to memorize but also don't want floating in your phone?
8