People serious about their privacy and data security are always concerned about their passwords. If you are one of them, chances are there that you will be aware about the rules of generating a good and secure password. But, it is not the case in general. Splashdata is a password management company well known for their product called SplashID. They came out with the list of passwords which are popular during 2015.
Now, it works in a reverse way. The most popular passwords are the least secured passwords. Here is the list of popular passwords during 2015 and needless to say, you should steer clear of these passwords and we seriously hope that yours is not on the list:
- 12345 (and variations 123456 and 12345678)
- password (and its variant, passw0rd)
- qwerty
- abc123
- 111111
- login
- welcome
- football
- baseball
- monkey
- starwars
- solo
- princess
- dragon
- master
The interesting part is, all these passwords are very different but they have something in common. These are all short, easy to remember common names and words. These passwords also capture common trends during that period. The words starwars, solo and princess are clearly influenced by latest Start wars movie release during 2015.
Beyond a good laughter, seeing this list you realize the lack of awareness on the part of the users which make them easy victims of cyber-attacks and identity theft. There is one and only one way to protect your vital data and information and that is by having a strong password.
How you generate a good password?
You need not reinvent the password management system. Rather, if you are attentive, you will be able to generate strong passwords using the good old password generation suggestions. Here are the golden rules:
- Long passwords are better. Try to keep it around 12 to 15 characters
- Mix the characters. It should be a good combination of Uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numerals, and symbols. Always remember that the more comfortably you will type it the easier it will be for the hackers to crack it.
- Obvious substitutions like replacing “o” with “0” and “s” with “$” or “l” with “1” doesn’t help you. By this logic using “pa$$word” instead of “password” hardly makes any difference.
- Avoid biasness and the way to do that is NOT to get personal. Please don’t use your name or any of the names of family members or pets, birth dates, phone numbers, addresses, or any other words associated with public domain personal data.
- Stay away from trending words and phrases. If it is a trend or if it is in news, hackers are likely try to with that first.
- Use as many different passwords as possible and use entirely different passwords for each financial entity. If it is too difficult to remember so many passwords, please use a password manager.
- Change your passwords as frequently as possible.
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