Are You on the Top 25 List of Easy-to-Hack Passwords?
- By Ginger Hill
- Jan 21, 2015
It still amazes me that people are using simplistic passwords with all the hacking that’s going on in the world. Maybe people are becoming numb to hearing about “strong, unique passwords,” or maybe people just don’t care. I’m not sure of the reasoning; I just know that password hacking is an epidemic that is causing all types of problems.
SplashData has released its annual list of the top 25 most common passwords found on the Internet complied from more than 3.3 million leaked passwords during the year of 2014 by users in North America and Western Europe. Although millions of passwords from Russian accounts were also leaked last year, this data was not included.
Simple number patterns, sports, names and swear words are common among the top 25:
- 123456
- password
- 12345
- 12345678
- qwerty
- 1234567890
- 1234
- baseball
- dragon
- football
- 1234567
- monkey
- letmein
- abc123
- 111111
- mustang
- access
- shadow
- master
- michael
- superman
- 696969
- 123123
- batman
- trustno1
Did you see your password(s) above? Ummm, you should change it. Plain and simple. Consider using passwords that are at least 8 digits or longer and include letters, numbers and symbols. Be sure to use different username and password combinations for each account. And, if you have trouble remembering or thinking of a safe password, consider using a password manager.
About the Author
Ginger Hill is Group Social Media Manager.