What do you use as a password for your most of your most precious information. No, I am not phishing for your password. If you are like me, you probably have too many passwords to keep track of easily. Be careful. It is temping to keep all of your passwords the same and to make them easy to remember.
Did you know that many people choose passwords that are easy to hack? The Target fiasco that affected millions of people during the last holiday season is being reported to have been done by a 17 year old in Russia!
SpashData, a password management application, puts out a list of the worst, most insecure passwords one can set each year. I hope you don’t find your password on this list. If you do, change it right now!
Especially if it is the #1 worst password, “123456”. #2 isn’t much better, “Password”. It used to hold the #1 spot.
“Seeing passwords like ‘adobe123′ and ‘photoshop’ on this list offers a good reminder not to base your password on the name of the website or application you are accessing,” Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData, said in a statement.
Also noteworthy to the company was that many of the passwords on the list were short and numerical. This could be because “websites are starting to enforce stronger password policies,” Slain said.
Here’s SplashData’s list of worst passwords of 2013 (showing rank and its change from 2012):
1. 123456 (Up 1)
2. password (Down 1)
3. 12345678 (Unchanged)
4. qwerty (Up 1)
5. abc123 (Down 1)
6. 123456789 (New)
7. 111111 (Up 2)
8. 1234567 (Up 5)
9. iloveyou (Up 2)
10. adobe123 (New)
11. 123123 (Up 5)
12. admin (New)
13. 1234567890 (New)
14. letmein (Down 7)
15. photoshop (New)
16. 1234 (New)
17. monkey (Down 11)
18. shadow (Unchanged)
19. sunshine (Down 5)
20. 12345 (New)
21. password1 (Up 4)
22. princess (New)
23. azerty (New)
24. trustno1 (Down 12)
25. 000000 (New)
The best advice for choosing a password is choose a longer password with varied characters. SplashData offers a few other tips:
Use passwords of eight characters or more with mixed types of characters. But even passwords with common substitutions like “dr4mat1c” can be vulnerable to attackers’ increasingly sophisticated technology, and random combinations like “j%7K&yPx$” can be difficult to remember. One way to create more secure passwords that are easy to recall is to use passphrases — short words with spaces or other characters separating them. It’s best to use random words rather than common phrases. For example, “cakes years birthday” or “smiles_light_skip?”
Avoid using the same username/password combination for multiple websites. Especially risky is using the same password for entertainment sites that you do for online email, social networking, or financial service sites. Use different passwords for each new website or service you sign up for.
Living in the digital age brings risks. You can avoid most of them by using common sense and putting some effort into protecting your accounts.
