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Put yourself in a bad guy’s shoes: You have a piece of software that logs usernames and passwords to banking sites. It can do a number of other things, like propagate itself to other computers that share drives with the victims and open address books and email itself to every email address it finds - so that it can log usernames and passwords from even more sites! It just needs to hit one system, really, to propagate.

With the number of systems and web sites you log into every day, generating and remembering unique, memorable, and unguessable passwords can be a real chore. However, a disciplined approach to password security is pivotal to thwarting password-based attacks. Who would use password attacks to break into your accounts? Thieves (your bank account and credit card sites), foreign governments and competitors (your bank and work accounts), ex-boyfriends (your Facebook account), ex-husbands (your personal email account)!