Password theft has become a common occurrence that’s why there have been predictions that it will soon be a thing of the past, replaced with biometric and other alternatives.
But then again, passwords is still and always will be the preferred authentication method because it really is difficult to beat in terms of ease of use.
Experts usually advice the use of long, tricky passwords combining both letters, numbers, and even symbols in order to give hackers and their robots a hard time in breaking it up. Curiously, despite these repeated warnings, the use of short, predictable and easy to guess passwords still persist.
An analytic data by Keeper Security of 10 million leaked passwords in 2016 reveals that four of the top 10 passwords on the list are six characters or shorter, and at the top of the list are those perennial favorites: “123456” (chosen by 17 percent of users), “123456789”, and “qwerty”. Some even went as far as using very commonly predicted passwords like, “111111” occupying the fifth position and “password” which occupies the seventh position. There are also simple passwords like; “7777777”, “qwertyuiop” which is a run through of the first row of alphabets on the computer keyboard, “666666”, “123123”, “123321” and many more.
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But don’t go thinking most of these passwords are for online banking accounts or other sensitive accounts. Most of them are from unimportant accounts. Research has shown that many users use weak, easy to remember and to guess passwords for unimportant accounts.
There are also two curious entries on the list: “18atcskd2w” and “3rjs1la7qe”. It is possible they were generated by bots when creating accounts for spamming and phishing.
This list could prove helpful in determining what and what to avoid when creating a password. It is also adviced that we use a password manager, so we won’t need to cram so many passwords in our head. Also, do remember to make that one password manager code long and complex and store it in a safe place.
Source: Helpnetsecurity