Something that has really been starting to intrigue me is the potential for wanton internet identity theft. It works like this... you go to a cool new site and sign up with a username and password. Just like the other hundreds of sites you belong to. But unless the site has imposed a particular username on you (your first choice was already in use), aren't you going to use your 'standard login'? Same thing on Amazon, Google, eBay and everywhere else? Don't lie. Everybody does. And that's why it is interesting.

What about on stinkinidiotsinweirdclothes.com ? Wouldn't you use your standard login there as well? If you're like most people, of course you would. Do you know who has access to the database? Do you trust him/her/them? One well-placed internet site could collect thousands of logins. Every one of them would probably be good on 10-100 major sites and thousands of smaller ones. Credit cards, shopping, bank accounts. It's probably a hundred times as effective as a phishing scam.

Now that you're aware of the problem, what can you do about it? Start changing your passwords! Change something - anything. (Perhaps) add the first character of the site name into your standard password. The only thing that's preventing this from being a global crisis is that nobody has sufficiently exploited it for personal gain (yet).