Poor Passwords still exist

November 24, 2011

Seems that people are still opting to choose poor passwords.

According to SplashData, the most common passwords on the web for 2011 are:

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. passwOrd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football

So if your password is in this list then you need to start thinking about a more secure password.

Begin by fulfilling a simple criteria:

• Minimum Length – try to ensure that your password is at least 8 characters long.
• Maximum length – the longer a password the more secure it is but do not make it too long. 14 characters is about the right length.
• Complexity – the more varied the characters you use the less likely your password will be guessed. So you should try to use three of four of the following four types of characters:
  1. Lowercase
  2. Uppercase
  3. Numbers
  4. Special characters such as !@#$%^&*(){}[]

Either way, if you pick a poor password, expect to be hacked.