It’s easy to look at corporations like Apple, Target and Sony and wonder how they let themselves fall victim to such massive breeches of security in 2014. However, it turns out that companies aren’t the only ones a little lax on security. According to SplashData’s yearly list of the worst passwords, we are risking our security in exchange for easy to remember passwords.
Here’s the top 25 worst passwords of 2014 (hint, if one of these is your password you might want to change that).
1 123456
2 password
3 12345
4 12345678
5 qwerty
6 1234567890
7 1234
8 baseball
9 dragon
10 football
11 1234567
12 monkey
13 letmein
14 abc123
15 111111
16 mustang
17 access
18 shadow
19 master
20 michael
21 superman
22 696969
23 123123
24 batman
25 trustno1
Also rounding out the list of the top 100 were birth years (1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992), sports (hockey, soccer and golf), popular teams (yankees, eagles, steelers, rangers and lakers) and names (michael, jennifer, thomas, jordan, hunter, michelle, charlie, andrew and daniel).
Although having a strong password may not be a complete fail safe, it will protect your secure information much better than a password that is literally password.
Tips for keeping your information secure:
- Make sure your password is at least 8 characters long and is a combination of numbers, letters (lower and uppercase) and special characters.
- Use a unique password for every important account. Although random password generators are the best, you can also devise your own “code” for devising unique passwords. Using a “key” system, all you need to remember is the key you create. By using a method, like alternating the characters in the key with characters of the website below, you’ll create a unique password for each website you visit.
Key (example combination of special characters and numbers): 1234$%!
Website Name: Protech
The password, using every other letter alternating between key and company website would be: 1P2r3o4t$e%c!h
Even though this password is complex, it is fairly easy to remember since all you need to know is the code and your method of randomizing the information. Remember the safest code system you can use is one you create yourself so come up with your own way to create unique passwords for every important account that you use.
- Change your password at first sign of trouble. Forgetting or delaying changing your password when something seems suspicious can be a costly mistake. Even if you just forget to log out of an account on a shared, public computer, be safe and change the password.
Share in the comments your thoughts on this list and any tips to creating a great password!
