Suspicious wife fails to get good password advice from The Guardian

Suspicious wife fails to get good password advice from The Guardian

From the relationship advice column of yesterday’s edition of The Guardian newspaper:

‘My husband’s password is his ex-girlfriend’s name. I am devastated. What made him change it?’

My husband’s password is his ex-girlfriend’s name for almost every account, and I am devastated. After a few months of our marriage, I came to know about his past relationship. In the first two years of our marriage we had a lot of fights about his ex, but things eventually settled down when she got married. Good riddance, I thought.

We’ve been married for almost six years and recently I came to know his password is her name. It was a shock. When I confronted him, he threatened to abandon me and take some other woman. I retreated. But I am heartbroken and burning from inside. What made him change his passwords to her name when initially they were different?

Obviously the best advice is for the woman to leave the idiot.

Not because he is clearly still obssessed with his ex-girlfriend (hey, maybe his former girlfriend’s name is seventeen characters long, and full of weird symbols) but because he’s using the same darn password for every account!

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Never ever re-use passwords on different services. Use a password manager to generate complex, hard-to-crack, unique passwords and store them securely.

As for the man’s threat to abandon the woman and find another wife over this password kerfuffle, surely he’s going to find it hard to find a new partner called Hunter2?


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

5 comments on “Suspicious wife fails to get good password advice from The Guardian”

  1. Chris Pugson

    The death of Uncle Jack has left a big hole in The Guardian's tech page.

  2. Kate Brown

    You usually give us a plug for LastPass too at this point. I'm using it and when it works it's very effective. But it keeps crashing Firefox – unexpectedly the LP symbol at the top goes orange (why?) and then the tabs all freeze for a while. After a bit it seems to come back, but this is very strange behaviour. It's also very inconsistent on Android (and apparently on Linux) as to whether or not it offers to fill in your password. The LastPass forums are full of complaints but I don't see LastPass responding. Does everyone use Apple, or something?

    1. Graham CluleyGraham Cluley · in reply to Kate Brown

      If you're not getting any job from LastPass's support forums, you might want to try reaching out to them via Twitter. Their handle is @lastpasshelp

      Hope that helps

  3. A

    I've used password safe (free) for years, 10 or so. Works well for my needs. Reliable. If a software is heavily plugged by a site or host, I tend to avoid it. Lessons learned after years of using software.

  4. Drew

    So what browser are you using?

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