If the onset of prominent hackings taught us anything in 2014, its literally nothing.
Password management firm Splashdata revealed its yearly list of the most terrible passwords and it’s just as horrible as you’d think. The organization, which investigated the 3 million passwords released online last year, uncovered that the most common leaked password in 2014 was “123456,” followed by “password” — both topped the list last year, as well.
Obviously, the more common a password is the higher the chances a hacker can get into individual records, such as email and banking.
While number series were as popular as ever, games terms like “baseball” and “football” were used more often, and additionally words related to most loved games teams — “yankees,” “hawks,” “steelers,” “rangers” and “lakers” all made the top 100.
Birthday years were common as well (particularly 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1992) and names like “Michael,” “Jennifer,” “Michelle” and “Hunter” are also among the top 100 worst passwords of 2014.
The list is especially alarming as it comes on the heels of significant hacking attacks against firms like Sony Pictures and the celebrity naked photograph scandal that hit last year.
Just have a look at the full list of passwords;
- 123456
2. password
3. 12345
4. 12345678
5. qwerty
6. 123456789
7. 1234
8. baseball
9. dragon
10. football
11. 1234567
12. monkey
13. letmein
14. abc123
15. 111111
16. mustang
17. access
18. shadow
19. master
20. michael
21. superman
22. 696969
23. 123123
24. batman
25. trustno1
There are simple approaches to handle the issue of passwords. And the responsibility is not so much on you — the entire password system is imperfect and muddled. However, there are simple steps you can take to be more secure. One is utilizing password management software to guarantee that your passwords are strong enough; upgraded, and safely locked down and in a place you can find them.
For people who can’t be worried to make that stride, you can still do more. Regardless of the fact that your password isn’t completely random and disconnected from your personality (which is best), you can still pick your same evident passwords and spruce them up a bit.
You can use the position of keys on a keyboard to do this — for instance, people who use “123456” or “qwerty” can just scramble those together based on the keys, making something like ‘q1w2e3r4t5′. Need to make it simpler? Take something you’ll recall: “My uncle lives in Kansas” and make it your password “Myunclelivesinkansas” and include his street address: “Myunclelivesinkansas207.” These long, complex passwords are really very hard to hack and are easy to recall. While these won’t prevent great hackers from getting into your stuff, at least you’ll be making moves to escape from the top 10.