A hacker gets into your laptop and starts guessing your password. No luck - they’re locked out after 5 tries. But then they steal your password database and run an offline attack - testing billions of guesses every second. If your password is just 8 lowercase letters, they crack it in under a second. Add one uppercase letter? Now it takes 24 minutes. Throw in a number - and you're up to 5 days. Add one symbol, and suddenly, they’ll need 3 years to break it. So yeah - a single character can buy you years.