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D'oh!GOOD PASSWORDS ARE essential to a safe account yet for some people, it’s treated as an afterthought where they choose the easiest thing to remember.
And in the case of SplashData’s annual bad password list, very little has changed from last year or the year before.
It analysed two million passwords that were leaked in 2015 and it found the most popular bad password continues to be ’123456′, followed by ‘password’, ’12345678′ and ‘qwerty’.
There were some attempts at creativity with ’1qaz2wsx’ and Star Wars-themed entries like ‘solo’ and ‘starwars’ but all of them have the same problem: they’re short, they’re common words or entries, they all use lower case words and/or numbers, and the typing patterns are easy to guess.
The list is as follows.
1) 123456
2) password
3) 12345678
4) qwerty
5) 12345
6) 123456789
7) football
8) 1234
9) 1234567
10) baseball
11) welcome
12) 1234567890
13) abc123
14) 111111
15) 1qaz2wsx
16) dragon
17) master
18) monkey
19) letmein
20) login
21) princess
22) qwertyuiop
23) solo
24) passw0rd
25) starwars
So what can you do to make a password stronger? Well not using any of the above examples is a good start, but there are some extra steps you can take.
The longer a password is, the better, but you should strengthen it by using capital letters, numbers and symbols as well. A good way of remembering is to use random phrases and split them up using symbols to strengthen them (something like ‘fire_Android+The42′). It’s not foolproof, but it will make your account harder to crack.
You can take things a step further by activating two-step verification (requiring a code from your phone to access an account) or invest in a password manager like 1Password, Dashlane or Sticky Password which encrypt your passwords, create random, complex ones for your accounts and only require one master password to remember.
And more importantly, don’t use the same password for two or more accounts. If one of them is compromised, then it puts the others at risk.
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A good password should contain at least 8 characters.
I’ve gone for : SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs
Thank god mine is not there, it took me ages to come up with joanTHE moan…
Are you serious putting your password up….
Most used passwords from people from Cork are the same as in this list but adding the word “boy” like “123456boy”
123456bai you mean ..
And for the ladies it’s 123456 girl
Most common FB password – youokayhun
Pm me hun.
No dellcomputer is not there, so I’m safe
It’s best to avoid any family or pet names/dates. open a dictionary & find an obscure 7 or 8 letter word, learn everything about it so you don’t forget it, then add one or two numbers at the end, eg zamindar47
Generally using a dictionary is a bad idea, as lots of hacking software uses a dictionary to find passwords. So fire_Android+The42 is a lot worse then for instance hshjseuuebd even though it only has one character type. One thing that is actually safer. Is to have a really long password say 30 characters long with mixed character types, and write it down and keep in your wallet. Your Wallet is going to be far less likely to be stolen by hackers than your password cracked
My password is so clever no one will ever guess it
stuohy
I can see your disdain for using a dictionary, by your comment.
your password is still vulnerable to advanced dictionary attack (yes, that’s a thing).
Take a phrase that’s memorable to you, and not obvious to outsiders (something you say every day).
Lets say it’s “I love the journal, except for the comments”. Use this to form the base for your password, taking the first letter of each word:
Iltjeftc
Now use a sequence of 4-6 numbers which is easy to memorize, but not obvious like your date of birth. Perhaps it’s an old pin code for a card you no longer have.
Iltjeftc12345
Your sequence of characters, while not truly random, is far less vulnerable to a dictionary attack, and you have a good length of password and a randomized digit sequence to help protect it.
I saw this a while back.
Now I’m wondering how many of us are using
Zamidar47
A sentence that includes a percentage.
Covers all bases (according to Edward Snowdon).
Like “Mary says celibacy is 99% effective”
Mary is a slut.
Mary is 99% a slut
Something like
s5Td9#Hy4k$
But I would never remember it….
Superman is also a popular choice.
I used to have Superpandaman, my nickname was panda in case you were wondering
Mine is 10987654321 so I’m alright.
date of birth backwards!
mine is abcdefg.
oh shite now everyone knows
trustno1 is an old reliable.
And I really hope people get that reference.
Use a different password on every site. Avoid sites that limit the length of your password, three mobile for example max ten characters. That should NEVER be one of the rules when entering passwords.
that’s a lot of passwords.
I have a common password, at least, for garbage sites I don’t trust but wouldn’t give much away. At that level I’m more concerned about their storage of passwords than I am the strength.
Truekey password manager. 2 factor authentication and unique passwords for every site without having to rember them all. http://www.truekey.com
Never liked the idea of password managers… too many eggs in the one basket.
If you have a briliant memory then fair play. But typically people end up using the same password on all sites which is another eggs-in-one-basket situation except that one of thse sites is probablybstoring the password with weak hashing or worse – in plain text.
Pick a changeable password. One method is to pick a random word like epiphany and change the third letter to the first letter of the site you’re using. So for Facebook it would be epfphany. Add numbers and capitals as required.
Or two random words like epiphanyhorse
I have my password as ‘incorrect’ so I’m always reminded if i forget it.
Still remember password for mainframe in college. L3FTBJ.
Cannot spot difference between number 2 & 24! Am Imisaong somwthing?
The ‘o’ is a zero ’0′.
No guest on the list??? People are learning!
Use a password manager like lastpass to create and remember your passwords. It uses TNO security to encrypt your database. Then you only need to remember a handful of -pass phrases-. Use 12+ character sentences with no spacing. Caps, numbers, and special characters are less important cryptographically than length but some services require it so put one number, cap and special in.
When they interviewed serious hackers they used social engineering to make the hosting company send a new password or they compromise your PC via free wifi hacks or exploits in script so it doesn’t matter what you type
Use special characters like @ or # or ^ as well as upper and lower case letters and numbers in passwords. Most modern systems allow blank spaces in passwords as well…. “1394 T!ckEt$ t0 Go” – Don’t use this example!!
Take a line from a favourite song then use the first letter from each word to create a password.
You’ll always remember the song.
My favourite password is….. The pen is in Joan’s mouth, can get that wrong with The penis in Joan’s mouth lol
That damn spacebar lol.
have your say