This could easily be remembered as the Year of the Data Breach.
Big corporations like Yahoo!, Bank of America, LinkedIn, Visa, and Barnes & Noble all fell victim to massive hacker attacks, putting customer data in jeopardy and reminding everyone that identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the U.S.
With all that going on, you'd think we would at least have learned how to pick secure passwords by now.
But if SplashData's new list of the 25 worst passwords in the U.S. is any indication, we have a long way to go.
"Password," "123456," and "12345678" topped the list for the second year running, and newcomers like "ninja," "monkey," and "jesus," were none too impressive.
What makes the list truly disturbing is how it was compiled –– from files containing millions of stolen passwords posted online by hackers themselves.
# Password Change from 2011
1 password Unchanged
2 123456 Unchanged
3 12345678 Unchanged
4 abc123 Up 1
5 qwerty Down 1
6 monkey Unchanged
7 letmein Up 1
8 dragon Up 2
9 111111 Up 3
10 baseball Up 1
11 iloveyou Up 2
12 trustno1 Down 3
13 1234567 Down 6
14 sunshine Up 1
15 master Down 1
16 123123 Up 4
17 welcome New
18 shadow Up 1
19 ashley Down 3
20 football Up 5
21 jesus New
22 michael Up 2
23 ninja New
24 mustang New
25 password1 New
Here are some tips from SplashData CEO Morgan Slain on how to choose a solid password:
–Use passwords of eight characters or more with mixed types of characters. (Pro tip: Use short words with spaces or other characters separating them. For example, “eat cake at 8!” or “car_park_city?”)
–Use different passwords for each new website or service you sign up for.
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