The growing number of cases of online hacking, security breach and identity theft is keeping cyber experts worried. And one of the major reasons behind such cases is the usage of easily hackable passwords by users.
SplashData, an organisation which provides security applications and services has come up with a list of ‘Worst Passwords of 2015’. The passwords were evaluated mostly from North American and Western European users.
“We have seen an effort by many people to be more secure by adding characters to passwords, but if these longer passwords are based on simple patterns they will put you in just as much risk of having your identity stolen by hackers,” said Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData.
Here is the list of top 25 ‘Worst Passwords of 2015‘ :
Some of the key findings of the research:
- Topping the list are ‘123456’ and ‘password’ which were the most commonly used passwords, as they have since the first list in 2011
- Longer passwords like ‘1234567890’ actually remain easy to crack thus making them worthless
- Popular sports like baseball and football continue to remain a popular password theme
- Use passwords or passphrases of twelve characters or more with mixed types of characters
- Avoid using the same password over and over again on different websites
- Use a password manager such as TeamsID to organize and protect passwords, generate random passwords, and automatically log into websites