Risking it: Do you need to change your password?

When there are so many things we need the internet for, it’s easy to lose login details and forget most of your passwords. So sometimes, we use an easy password or the same one for everything. But is this putting us at risk of being hacked?

The top 25 passwords around the world have been revealed and some of them defy common sense. Aside from being vulnerable to hacks on your computer and data, you can have anything from your money to your personal photos and videos stolen, just by having a crackable code.

So what was the most popular password of 2014? 123456. And 2013? Password. Most sites try to avoid you using simply just numbers or letters as these are very easy to crack, but often you can get around it by entering something very obvious like your name and year of birth.

But wait, in order to find out this information about our passwords, don’t they have to hack our accounts? Not exactly. Security firm SplashData analysed 3.3 million leaked passwords that came out last year – because that can happen. And the easier the password, the easier it will to find out information about you.

CEO of SplashData Morgan Slain said, “Any password using numbers alone should be avoided, especially sequences”. An ideal password will be a mixture of numbers, letters and punctuation.

Here is the list of the top 25 passwords online – is yours in here? If it is or even if it’s not, consider changing your passwords to something else.

Tell us, have you ever been hacked online before? Did someone use your password? Tell us below.

The Top 25 Passwords

:: 123456

:: password

:: 12345

:: 12345678

:: qwerty

:: 1234567890

:: baseball

:: dragon

:: football

:: 1234567

:: monkey

:: letmein

:: abc123

:: 111111

:: mustang

:: access

:: shadow

:: master

:: michael

:: superman

:: 696969

:: 123123

:: batman

:: trustno1