Do you use passwords like your child’s name,your anniversary,your birthday or even your Social Security Number? Keep reading….
Most users still haven’t answered the call by security experts to implement more robust passwords. In fact, in a list of the easiest to hack passwords, simply typing ’123456′ took a truly forgettable top prize.
Security firm Imperva recently released its list of the passwords most likely to be hacked based on 32 million instances of successful hacking. Imperva named their report “Consumer Password Worst Practices,” and some of the entries near the top are truly simple and could lead to theft or identity fraud. Are any of these your passwords?
Top 10 Worst Passwords
The following is a list of the most predictable passwords, and should not be used under any circumstances (Source: pcworld.com):
1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123
How to Strengthen Your Passwords
Other key findings in the report: it seems that almost 1 in 3 users choose passwords comprised of six or fewer characters. More than half use passwords based on only alpha-numeric characters and almost 50 per cent used variations on their name, popular slang terms, or simple strings of consecutive characters from the average QWERTY keyboard — such as ‘asdfg’.
Imperva has made several obvious recommendations, suggesting most users adopt passwords with at least eight characters and to mix those characters between upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Passwords should be simple enough that they won’t be too easily forgotten, but the idea is to make cracking the code virtually impossible for either an unknown or known hacker.
Being hacked is not something you want to happen so take heed to this and rethink your passwords. I also suggest a tool called Roboform. With this on your computer you can have all your passwords different and it remembers them for you. Click here to learn more about Roboform.
If this was helpful please share it with your friends and I always love comments below. Thanks!
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March 7th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
What a topic! The things you don’t see because they are right in front of your face! Thanks for this. I may have some strengthening to do.
Patrick McIntosh´s last blog ..Squaw Valley Freeriding
March 8th, 2010 at 5:03 am
I had to strengthen some too. It was so easy for me to use the same simple PW. I was able to remember it.
Now I have changed them up and use Roboform to help me. Love that tool. I am happy you liked the information.
Beverly
March 10th, 2010 at 1:35 am
I tend to use a variation of one main password for most everything, which helps me to change it up yet still be able to remember it. Though I sometimes have to run through a few variations before I get to the right one! I started using a service called lastpass which is a really great plugin to help with storing passwords. It’s definitely made my life easier.
It kills me how many people are using passwords that you can guess in a matter of minutes. I’d be willing to bet that I could guess the passwords to many of my friends and family simply because I know them so well. Nobody would ever guess mine because it only has meaning to me. My brother has been trying for years to no avail! lol
~Angel
Angel Taylor´s last blog ..Learning to Have No Shame
March 10th, 2010 at 4:59 am
There are many great ways to remember as well as store passwords.I was one of those people too until someone hacked my Facebook page.I hope I have made mine harder now. Thanks for the comment.
Beverly