If You Have One Of These Passwords You Should Change It Right Now
If your password is "password," it's really not very secure. And don't change it to "123456," because that's easy for hackers to figure out too. Seriously! People are still using these horrible passwords and several others that need to go away right now.
I don't know how it works at your company, but our company email has such rigid password specs that I usually have to block out fifteen minutes for the process of creating a new one. One time I got the "doesn't meet security requirements" notice so many times I seriously thought I was going to have to call the FBI to give me some pointers on how to create a really cryptic password. I finally added an ampersand at just the right spot and it accepted my new password, but I'm already getting anxiety over having to change it again.
Gizmodo says the most popular passwords of 2018 are also some of the simplest and most obvious, and therefore the least secure.
The 25 Most Popular Passwords of 2018 (and how they compared to last year)
1. 123456 (Unchanged)
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)
Number 20 seems sort of challenging, but it's created by holding down the shift key and then the numbers 1 through 8 all in a row. Not so tricky after all.
Do you keep a list somewhere that contains all of your passwords? I do, but half the time I can't find the list when I've forgotten the password, and I end up having to reset it anyway. It's not online shopping and social media that make us less productive at work. It's getting caught in password black holes.
If you have one of the passwords on the list, it's probably a good idea to swap it out for a new one, especially it's protecting your bank account or all of your company secrets. And changing it to "iloveyou12345" probably won't cut it.