It will likely be said that 2018 was the year of security breaches in many sectors, especially in the travel industry. We are still dealing with the massive security breach of 500 million accounts with Marriott/SPG, there was British Airways, Cathay Pacific, and many companies that suffered breaches.
The Top 25 Worst, Most Popular Passwords of 2018
There are a few things that you should do to protect yourself from such mass breaches as well as the security intrusions that come against you personally (read about my friend Andy’s nightmare situation with his AAdvantage account). Hackers are always on the prowl and one of the first lines of defense is to choose an effective password.
SplashData released their annual list of the worst passwords. There are 100 in all that were gleaned from leaked passwords of 5 million accounts on the internet but these 25 are the most popular, worst passwords to have. Not only are they easy to crack but, well, just check out the list! By the way, why is my name (Charlie) one of the most popular, worst passwords?! 🙂
1 123456 (Rank unchanged from last year)
2 password (Unchanged)
3 123456789 (Up 3)
4 12345678 (Down 1)
5 12345 (Unchanged)
6 111111 (New)
7 1234567 (Up 1)
8 sunshine (New)
9 qwerty (Down 5)
10 iloveyou (Unchanged)
11 princess (New)
12 admin (Down 1)
13 welcome (Down 1)
14 666666 (New)
15 abc123 (Unchanged)
16 football (Down 7)
17 123123 (Unchanged)
18 monkey (Down 5)
19 654321 (New)
20 !@#$%^&* (New)
21 charlie (New)
22 aa123456 (New)
23 donald (New)
24 password1 (New)
25 qwerty123 (New)
They estimate that 10% of people used one of these passwords and 3% used the “123456” password! If that includes you, time to change your password! Visit their website to see the whole list of 100 worst, popular passwords and also ways to choose a more effective one.
Also, consider one of the programs that can use complex passwords while using a single password on your machine to access them. 1Password is one such, very popular program.
So, do I feel special that my name is one of 2 on the list, or no? 🙂
Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock
Own I had to send a email from my bosses computer, she was out of town and I needed to attach a file that was on her computer to this particular email, this was in 2002 before the rise of good smartphone, she password was donkeycock8, lol she was so embarrassed telling me the password over the phone , still to this day I wonder where the “8” came from