If a company or website gets hacked, why does it matter how strong my password is? Isn’t it more important that I don’t re-use a password?

Question

If a site gets hacked, am I at any sort of advantage by having a complicated password, or does it not really matter at that point?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Any company worth its salt will store your password in a form called a hash. This is you password scrambled up and reduced in size with math, so it’s near impossible to get your original password back. The standard practice for hackers once they get the hash is to do the same math at all sorts of different passwords to see if your hash comes out. This is the reason you have complicated passwords. More possible different passwords make this so much more difficult.

So once they plug the hole in their security, the hackers won’t be able to just log in using your password. They wouldn’t have figured it out.