There is a fine balance in choosing a password. Usually, they involve a selection of numbers and letters (both upper- and lower-cased ones). Most of the time, we keep them simple, because we’d like to actually remember them. Oftentimes, however, many consumers opt for the easy route and go for a password that is so easy to remember, it becomes a liability. You know, passwords like “qwerty”.
Splashdata, a security firm which compiles a list of stolen passwords each year, has released the top 25 stolen passwords for 2013. What actually made the news this year was the fact that the perennial no.1, “password”, has lost out to another equally creative password, “123456”. What also skewed the rankings this year may be Adobe’s massive hacking, where 38 million accounts were hacked into (more than ten times greater than the initial 2.9 Adobe announced).
Splashdata actually gave a list of the top 25 worst passwords of 2013, so you’re in luck if you’re in for some dark humour – these were, after all, actual passwords that were used by many a lazy consumer. Check out the list after the jump.
1. 123456 (Up 1)
2. password (Down 1)
3. 12345678 (Unchanged)
4. qwerty (Up 1)
5. abc123 (Down 1)
6. 123456789 (New)
7. 111111 (Up 2)
8. 1234567 (Up 5)
9. iloveyou (Up 2)
10. adobe123 (New)
11. 123123 (Up 5)
12. Admin (New)
13. 1234567890 (New)
14. letmein (Down 7)
15. photoshop (New)
16. 1234 (New)
17. monkey (Down 11)
18. shadow (Unchanged)
19. sunshine (Down 5)
20. 12345 (New)
21. password1 (Up 4)
22. princess (New)
23. azerty (New)
24. trustno1 (Down 12)
25. 000000 (New)
Perhaps…it is a good idea to listen to sites that require at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, numbers and even spaces when filling out a password.
(Source: Splashdata, Gizmodo)
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