Why Developers Are Bad at Securing Their Own API Keys

We spend hours making our apps secure for users. HTTPS everywhere. Encrypted databases. Two factor auth. Rate limiting. Then we store our own API keys in a Notion doc shared with the whole team. The irony is real. ## Why this happens When you're building fast, security shortcuts feel harmless. You tell yourself: "I'll fix this later" "It's just a dev key" "Nobody will find this Notion link" But later never comes. And dev keys often have the same permissions as prod keys. ## The most common mistakes I see API keys in .env files committed to GitHub Keys shared over Slack and never rotated Same key used across dev and production No record of which keys exist or where they are Keys never rotated after a team member leaves ## What actually helps Start treating your API keys like passwords. You would never store passwords in a Notion doc. You would never share passwords over Slack. You would never use the same password everywhere. Same rules apply to API keys. Keep them in one secure place.