How secure is your online life? Are your passwords easy to hack? Are you using a password that could be easily guessed or discovered?
Even having a great password is no guarantee of security if you leave copies of your passwords near your computer. If someone was in your home or office would they find it fairly easy to discover your passwords? Do you use the old hiding spots of under the keyboard or under your desk?
SplashData, a well-known provider of password management applications. has revealed its 25 worst passwords for 2011 with their article, When “Most Popular” Isn’t A Good Thing: Worst Passwords of the Year – And How to Fix Them.
The top five are all fairly simple passswords which would prove no match for even the most basic online hackers.
password
123456
12345678
qwerty
abc123
The rest of the passwords on the list are fairly simple with people expecting passwords like ‘iloveyou’ and ‘trustno1’ to offer them some security. It’s worth checking out the original list to see if any of your passwords are featured. If they are, change them right away. (We should all be changing our passwords regularly any way.)
On Wednesday during my Morning Café radio program on 98.5 Sonshine FM I chatted with our technology expert, David Cook. We discussed passwords and looked at the best ways to create good passwords or passphrases. If you want to stay safe online you can listen to our chat by clicking the play button on the audio player below.
[audio:http://mpegmedia.sonshinefm.ws/feeds/TEC251111_1356.mp3]Do you think some of your friends would enjoy reading Is Your Password Secure?? Please use the buttons below to share the post. Thanks.
There is nothing better than 1Password for Mac and iOS devices. It generates long random passwords, remembers them for you, and will automatically log you back into sites in the future. No 123456s with this application!
I used a different password for all my various logins at websites, work etc. Not hard really to come up with a easy to remember combo of characters that you can make unique for each website/login point.