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

Companies don’t store your password. They store a hash of it which is a type of encription(over simplifying I know). Hackers still don’t know your password, but they can guess passwords until they get the same hash to find it. If you use a really strong password they will probably never figure it out so you will be OK. But if it a weak password they will figure it our pretty fast. If you never reuse passwords tho, it won’t affect you very much.