If Your Password Is On This List, You Should Change It Immediately
Reuters/Vivek Prakash No, "password" is not a good password. 2014 was not a great year for password security.
Between the Sony leaks, the large-scale iCloud photo hack that resulted in private, naked pictures of celebrities leaking online, and security breaches at companies like Target and Home Depot, it seemed everyone was vulnerable to having their privacy breached.
On Tuesday, password-management company SplashData released its annual list of the worst passwords of the last year. SplashData took a look at the 3.3 million passwords that got leaked last year, analyzing the most commonly leaked and least secure passwords.
Most of the passwords on SplashData's list come from North American and Western European users. Unsurprisingly, "123456" and "password" both topped the list this year, but phrases like "monkey," "dragon," and "letmein" also placed in the top 25 list.
To keep your passwords secure, you definitely shouldn't use any of the phrases on SplashData's list. SplashData recommends using passwords that are eight digits or longer, with different types of characters (letters, numbers, and symbols); using different username and password combinations for different websites; and using a password manager to protect your passwords and help you generate passwords that are random and thus more difficult for others to guess correctly.
Here's SplashData's full list. If your password is on here, you should probably consider changing it.
123456
password
12345
12345678
qwerty
1234567890
1234
baseball
dragon
football
1234567
monkey
letmein
abc123
111111
mustang
access
shadow
master
michael
superman
696969
123123
batman
trustno1
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