Smartphone app developer SplashData recently released their annual list of the most common passwords. Is yours among them? If so, you really should change it – now!
The top 25 are:
- 123456
- password
- 12345678
- qwerty
- abc123
- 123456789
- 111111
- 1234567
- iloveyou
- adobe123
- 123123
- sunshine
- 1234567890
- letmein
- photoshop
- 1234
- monkey
- shadow
- sunshine
- 12345
- password1
- princess
- azerty
- trustno1
- 000000
They compiled the list by looking at the millions of stolen passwords that are made public, including 38 million stolen from Adobe in October. As they point out, this explains why “photoshop” is on that list – because a lot of people use the name of the product they’re using as their password. That’s a really, really bad idea.
While we’re on the subject of passwords, let’s remind you not to use any password based on personal information that a hacker could find out easily, such as your date of birth, spouse’s name, pet’s name, religion, or home town. And don’t think that just changing all the E’s to 3’s, the S’s to 5’s or the O’s to 0’s will help – hacking programs will try all the variations. “pa55w0rd” is not a secure password!
Understandably, using random sequences of numbers and letters can be hard to remember – if your password is g84dnP393, you’ll probably have to write it down somewhere, and that’s not secure either. Go instead for a couple of random words that make sense to you and which will be easy to remember, and mix them up a bit if that helps. Something like “chocogator21” or “strike_pear” are much better.
Here’s a quick test. Ask a friend or co-worker to guess your password. (Don’t tell them whether they got it right or wrong, obviously!) But if they get it right, or even nearly right, then change your password right away!
1 Comment