Don’t Enter Your Password Into That Website: A Rant You Need to Hear

Let me set the stage.

I came across a YouTube video the other day where the creator casually suggested that you can “check if your password has been leaked” by typing it directly into a website or tool. It was not a very popular content creator, none the less, I think we need to talk about this.

Paste your actual password into a field, hit submit, and boom — it tells you whether your password has been in a breach.

Sounds helpful, right?

No. It’s not. It’s dangerous. And frankly, it’s reckless advice.

Never. Type. Your. Password. Into. Random. Websites.

I don’t care how confident the creator sounds, how professional the site looks, or how many upvotes or views the tool has. The golden rule of password hygiene is simple:

Never share your password with anyone or anything unless you’re logging into the actual service.

Because here’s what could go horribly wrong:

1. You don’t control what that tool does with your input

Sure, it says it doesn’t store your password.

But unless you’ve reviewed the backend code and the hosting infrastructure, you have zero visibility into whether:

• Your password is being sent over plain HTTP (yes, this still happens).
• It’s being logged to the server or stored in memory.
• It’s hashed improperly (or not at all).
• Or worse — collected and used for credential stuffing later.

2. Even legit-sounding tools can go rogue (or get hacked)

That tool might be safe today. But what if the server gets compromised tomorrow?

You’ve just handed over a password you may be reusing on other sites. Now it’s a ticking time bomb.

3. People don’t need encouragement to be bad with passwords

Let’s be honest: most users are already reusing passwords across services. Encouraging them to paste their real password anywhere other than a login form just normalizes bad habits.

Instead of helping people, you’re teaching them to trust random password forms. That’s a recipe for social engineering disasters down the line.

So what should people do instead?

If you’re a content creator, teacher, or dev building tools — please do better.

Here’s what you should recommend instead:

• Use password managers: Encourage people to generate and store strong, unique passwords for every site.
• Use HaveIBeenPwned correctly: Their password check tool uses k-Anonymity — users don’t send their full password. Show people how to use it safely if you must.
• Teach proper hygiene: Tell people not to test their actual passwords. Ever. and I mean NEVER Ever.

Final Thoughts

Yes, checking if a password has been breached is important. But asking users to paste their real password into a third-party tool is not the solution — it’s the problem.

PS: If you found this post because you were told to paste your password into something — change your password now.

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