Choosing passwords that are "too easy" could be the reason more New Zealander's are being hacked.
That's the warning from cyber security experts who say hundreds of online accounts are being infiltrated each month.
Tauranga woman, Angela Brooking was a victim to hacking after finding that someone in Poland was taking pricey Uber rides on her account.
"It was pretty scary, I didn't know what was happening. Our bank account was slowly going down and I had no control over what was happening," she told 1 NEWS.
Alaric Jacobsen shares her pain. His business Instagram was also hacked with hundreds spent on advertising.
"I'm a lot more vigilant now on my passwords - every platform has a different password," he says.
But many Kiwis aren't that savvy, instead opting for an easy password or using the same one over and over.
Declan Ingram of Cert NZ says passwords need to be far more diverse.
"Every single account that you have needs to have a unique password and that's obviously an enormous feat and really difficult for people to do, so the key thing someone can do to make it much easier for them.. is have a password manager.
A password manager can be on a phone or computer and acts like a safe, storing passwords to different sites so you only need to remember one to access them all.
Experts warn it's also not safe to have the same password with the addition of different numbers.
"The attackers are a little bit sneaky and they can see those sorts of patterns," Mr Ingram says.
The advice being that while updating passwords, check your privacy settings and update your software too.
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