Ever thought about setting an obvious password, so obvious that scammers would overlook it? Or perhaps you’ve made all your passwords the same for the sake of simplicity? If so, it’s time to rethink that strategy.
A recent list of the world’s most commonly used passwords reveals that many are opting for simplicity over security, using easily guessable passwords. Top of the list are sequences like ‘qwertyuiop’—simply the top row of keyboard keys—and ‘1234567890’, followed closely by ‘welcome’, ‘abc123’, and the classic ‘password’.
The list was released by American company, SplashData, who said “lame” passwords were the reason so many people had their computers and private email accounts hacked.
“We have seen an effort by many people to be more secure by adding characters to passwords, but if these longer passwords are based on simple patterns they will put you in just as much risk of having your identity stolen by hackers,” SplashData chief executive Morgan Slain said.
It’s hoped a new push towards fingerprint readers and facial or voice recognition will eliminate the need for passwords all together, but until then we are being urged to put more effort into our passwords.
According to SplashData’s experts, a strong password should be at least 12 characters long, mixing upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters—and it definitely shouldn’t be something predictable like ‘password’, ‘football’, or ‘abc123’.
Take a look at the most common passwords below and be sure to change yours if it’s on the list!
Do you have trouble remembering your passwords? Will you be changing your password after seeing this list?