As more and more of our personal information is being pushed to the cloud, it’s absolutely essential that you re-evaluate your passwords soon. Most people think that the cloud is not secure and the’re partially right. But it’s not because the cloud is not secure, it’s because people insist on using weak passwords and then compound the problem by using the same weak password for all their online accounts.
We thought you’d be interested to know the 25 worst passwords. Sadly these are not only the worst passwords, but commonly used passwords as well.
Here is a list of the 25 worst passwords compiled by SplashData…
“…SplashData created the rankings based on millions of stolen passwords posted online by hackers. Here is the complete list:
1. password
2. 123456
3.12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football
‘…Hackers can easily break into many accounts just by repeatedly trying common passwords,” Slain says. “Even though people are encouraged to select secure, strong passwords, many people continue to choose weak, easy-to-guess ones, placing themselves at risk from fraud and identity theft…'”
Both of us here at Cloudeight urge you to start using strong passwords right away — and warn you to never use the same password for more than one account. Hackers with sophisticated password cracking tools can guess simple passwords in a fraction of a second. It would take a trillion years though, for a hacker to crack a strong thirteen-character password consisting of random letters, numbers and characters.
Both of us use tools like Roboform and Lastpass to generate and store strong passwords for us. Most people fear if they use a password like 7AsDLY6%PP93MW7 they’ll not be able to remember it – but the truth is you don’t have to. In fact, Lastpass is free and not only remembers passwords and username combinations for you, it will automatically fill in the login information for you as well.
Hackers are not geniuses. It does not take a genius to crack a password such as “password” or “iloveyou”. And whether you like it or not, more and more of your personal information and priceless photos, music and documents are being stored in the cloud. And the weakest security point in the cloud is your password.
Don’t take chances and count on luck to protect you. Update your weak passwords with strong passwords — and never use the same password for more than one account.
If you have not yet chosen a password manager, take a look at LastPass. It’s free and it works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.
(References http://news.yahoo.com/25-worst-passwords-2011-study-223430003.html )
I’ve been a premium subscriber for years and and have made some surprising progress in using computers. Without your instruction I would have quit trying. THANKS!!!This 82 year old brain isn’t as keen as it used to be.
Thank you for suggesting ditching “Digital Lifeboat”. That one program was the THIEF of over 1/2 of my speed. Now I’m going to look for other “THIEVES” in “start up” programs. I’m really afraid to go that route for fear of really messing things up but when I’ve built up the courage I’ll give it a try. Wish me luck!
Don (Papa) Bone, Lake Orion, MI
I have put Lastpass on my computer now my colour has has gone from my email acccount also pics in my ebay don`t show anymore. I am running windows7 64 bit, what has gone wrong
Thank you for this wonderful website. I am using Outlook 2003 and I’m getting a recurring message to enter network password. Can you tell me how to stop the requests? Oh, btw…my husband called att they said because we now have uverse we must pay for them to tell us how to fix this problem with outlook. Before uverse we had no problem getting help without cost.
I have been a Premium member for a long time. Switched the weekly e-mail you send out to Gmail as you suggested since I wasn’t getting it weekly. Now I haven’t been receiving it in my Gmail account for several weeks. What have I done wrong? Did my subscription run out?
blueskies2golf@yahoo.com or
golfergal6@gmail.com
I signed up for Lastpass a while back. Four days later Lastpass was hacked. I now use a program called http://strongpasswordgenerator.com to create strong passswords and have a list of my passwords/websites on a flashdrive. I plug in my flashdrive, do my thing then unplug my flashdrive and finally run crapcleaner; then shut down my puter. I feel more secure this way.
Lastpass was never hacked – there was an attempted hack and no one had any passwords stolen. And even if the thieves had stolen passwords every one of them is protected by 128-bit encryption which can never be cracked — at least not unless someone has an infinite number of computers and an infinite amount of time. It is said it would take a hacker one trillion years to crack 128-bit encryption. The universe isn’t even 100 billion years old.
Keeping your passwords on a flash drive is so much less safe than LastPass. All someone has to do is take your flash drive. You may feel more secure this way but CCleaner only deletes the temp files — anything you’ve ever typed on your computer since you’ve had it can be retrieved.