I have just banned a user from our forums. This user made use of another forum to obtain a password for another of our users, and then took that password to access the account here.

I would like to make two things clear:

1) If you sign up at forum advertised in the Advertising forum, do NOT use the same password there as you do here, especially if the admins of that forum are also members here.

2) If you plan to try to steal people's passwords like this, DO NOT THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH IT. The person who did this was a complete amateur and made it entirely obvious who it was that hijacked the account. Even if you cover your tracks well, we can still find out.

I trust that I will not have to worry about matters like this in the future. If I do, I can assure you that it will not be pretty.

I can really relate to this. Not in the hacker, but the victim. I was really new at using computer, like.....seven years old, and used the same password for everything. Someone had figured out my password, used google to find people with the same name, I used the same name for everything as well -.-, and hacked everything I had. I can remember that to this day, now being 12, and have to tell everyone from my experiences,

DON'T USE THE SAME PASSWORD AND/OR NAME FOR FORUMS OR ANY OTHER THING ON THE INTERNET!! SOME PEOPLE HAVE NO HEARTS AND WILL STEAL EVERYTHING YOU HAVE!

....and that pretty much covers it.

It also helps to change your passwords every so often, in addition to making your passwords hard to guess (this is pretty much the main idea to remember).
I change my passwords everywhere at regular intervals (a few months or so, sometimes less), and I've never been hacked on any of those places. Ever.
And picking different names for everything not only adds more variety to your names, but also makes you a bit harder to track to other names. (But only a bit.)
I thought I should say my piece of mind on the subject.

- DNA

Good thinking. I better go change some passwords Thanks for this.

No problemo. I like to share my stories so I can help people in avoiding these things. Just doing my part form the community...*starts skipping and whistling a pleasant tune*...

I originally did that when I was new to the internet, uaing the same thing for all my passwords.
Thought early on in the Summer I realized the fault and now all my account passwords are different, and I go by about 5 or more different usernames. I still have one problem, I signed up for so many sites I've been forced to leave half of them.

Once I got hacked on neopets. My password was qwerty. OH HOW NAIVE I WAS.

I only use one password because I'd only remember one, but it's really pretty unguessable, unless you have time to enter a trillion combinations of letter or numbers. I also make sure only to sign up for sites I ither trust the admin of, or that are on one of these free hosting sites, because I know how they work, and know you can't find the password of a member from them.

I have accounts at at least 50 various website using the same 2 passwords. I'm such an offender :O!

Actually I go by the same username almost everywhere as I had mass migrated with other people to other forums as the owner of the one we were on was shutting down. It actually pays to stick with the same name. I use the same username but not the same password.