If someone asks if you are lazy in setting the password for your accounts, the answer might be an unequivocal ‘Yes’. If someone questions whether you have learnt anything from the numerous hacks and leaks recently, then again, the answer would apparently be a ‘No’.
Surely, you are wondering why I am talking in riddles.
It turns out, the list for the worst passwords of 2018 has been released – and obviously, they are all easy to guess.
A brand new entrant to the list of worst passwords for 2018 is ‘Donald’, ranked at number 23 and presumably inspired by US President Donald Trump (I assure you that this is not fake news). Password management company SplashData released the ‘100 worst’ list based on the 5 million leaked passwords on the internet this year.
The top rankings are retained by '123456' and 'Password’.
SplashData also estimated that around 10 percent of people have used at least one of the 25 passwords on this year’s list, with roughly 3 percent using ‘12345’ as their passwords.
Morgan Stanley, Chief Executive of SplashData, said:
“Hackers have great success using celebrity names, terms from pop culture and sports, and simple keyboard patterns to break into accounts online because they know so many people are using that easy-to-remember password.”
“People who used these passwords are at substantial risk of being hacked and having their identities stolen” the company said.
Here are some of the worst passwords of 2018:
A youngsters’ favorite and easy to remember ‘I love you’ is at the 10th rank, while ‘princess’ is ranked at 11. Unsurprisingly, many sports fans opted for ‘Football’, which is listed on the 16th spot.
‘Charlie’, ‘Monkey’, ‘Welcome’ and ‘666666’ were among the other unoriginal entries to the list.
How do you set a strong password?
Los Gatos based-firm SplashData offered some tips to protect your data. The company suggested including a passphrase of 12 characters or more with mixed types of characters, and using different passwords for each log-in. It also advised users to generate secure random passwords and automatically log into websites.
I hope that at least after this, the lazy souls will act on the advice of SplashData and scratch their heads before setting passwords.
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