If you aren’t aware of the constant threat against your personal information, then you aren’t paying attention. Hackers, computer viruses, phishing scams, and other scary sounding terms are everywhere — it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you and everyone wants to read your pervy emails.
Often-times, your first line of defense against a personal data breach is to have a rock solid password. Mine is Bosco, but others don’t take safeguarding their accounts as seriously as I do according to Splash Data, who compiled a list of the 25 worst passwords for Time Magazine.
Here is the full list:
1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345
4. 12345678
5. qwerty
6. 123456789
7. 1234
8. baseball
9. dragon
10. football
11. 1234567
12. monkey
13. letmein
14. abc123
15. 111111
16. mustang
17. access
18. shadow
19. master
20. michael
21. superman
22. 696969
23. 123123
24. batman
25. trustno1
Feeling a little nervous? Do you see one of your passwords on the list? I know I see one or two that I used to use, but who can blame us? It’s hard to remember passwords for every single thing and every single thing needs a password now. Plus, we’ve gone beyond the point where a simple word will do.
Now we need to make sure that we have a capital letter, a number, and a special character, even though the human brain isn’t mean to remember 12-letter words with a percent sign and a 7 in the middle. And according to Time’s chat with security expert Bruce Schneier, more is required to build a truly strong password.
“Come up with an entire phrase that’s easy for you to remember, and then use the first instance of each letter, number and symbol from each word in the phrase, keeping punctuation intact as well.”
Ugh. I’m going to sound like my writing hat is made out of tin-foil, but I feel like the password process keeps getting more and more complicated in an effort to push us all toward retinal scans and forehead barcodes. And if I have to reset my f*cking IOS password one more time because I can’t remember which letter I capitalized, I will happily sign up. Seriously, scan me so I never have to remember a password, my mother’s fourth grade science teacher’s maiden name, or the street that my first pet grew up on.
Source: Time