Are you worried about the emotional damages associated with Inception-style phishing scams, Facebook profile highjackers and online credit card fraud? Us too! Let’s be paranoid (and secure) together!
SplashData has just released an essential online password shit list determining how susceptible you are to identity theft with their annual countdown of the most unoriginal and hence popular passwords on the internet. “Password” tops the list for a second consecutive year in front of “123456”, “12345678” and “abc123” so, you know, if those are the highly creative gatekeepers of your carefully cultivated online personal brand you might want to change them immediately.
The countdown was collated using the most popular stolen passwords posted online by hackers this year and remains largely unchanged from last year’s list with just five new additions in “jesus”, “welcome”, “ninja”, “mustang” and “password1”.
Weirdly enough, “ashley” was the highest ranked proper noun followed by “jesus”, “michael” and “mustang”.
“At this time of year, people enjoy focusing on scary costumes, movies and decorations, but those who have been through it can tell you how terrifying it is to have your identity stolen because of a hacked password,” says Morgan Slain, SplashData CEO. “We’re hoping that with more publicity about how risky it is to use weak passwords, more people will start taking simple steps to protect themselves by using stronger passwords and using different passwords for different websites.”
Take a look at the list below…
The 25 Most Popular Passwords Of 2012
1. password (Unchanged)
2, 123456 (Unchanged)
3. 12345678 (Unchanged)
4. abc123 (Up 1)
5. qwerty (Down 1)
6. monkey (Unchanged)
7. letmein (Up 1)
8. dragon (Up 2)
9. 111111 (Up 3)
10. baseball (Up 1)
11. iloveyou (Up 2)
12. trustno1 (Down 3)
13. 1234567 (Down 6)
14. sunshine (Up 1)
15. master (Down 1)
16. 123123 (Up 4)
17. welcome (New)
18. shadow (Up 1)
19. ashley (Down 3)
20. football (Up 5)
21. jesus (New)
22. michael (Up 2)
23. ninja (New)
24. mustang (New)
25. password1 (New)
