WATCH ABOVE: Splashdata has released its list of the worst passwords of 2014. So listen up – if yours is on the list then it’s time to make a change. Nicole Bogart reports.
TORONTO – If there were ever a more important lesson for web users to learn over the last year, it’s practicing good password security. But if the following list is any indication, not everyone is listening.
SplashData, a password management application company, has released its annual list of the 25 worst passwords of the year. The list is compiled from files containing over 3.3 million leaked passwords in 2014.
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“123456’ and “Password” top this year’s list – as they have every year since SplashData started compiling the data in 2011.
This year, some of the newer – and arguably more creative – passwords include “batman” and “trustno1” (which is, ironically, bad for security).
Here is the full list:
- 123456
- password
- 12345
- 12345678
- qwerty
- 123456789
- 1234
- baseball
- dragon
- football
- 1234567
- monkey
- letmein
- abc123
- 111111
- mustang
- access
- shadow
- master
- michael
- superman
- 696969
- 123123
- batman
- trustno1
Tips for creating secure passwords
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If any of your passwords made this list, you might want to consider some of the following advice.
Stay away from easy-to-guess passwords like “123456″ or “Password” and easy to guess identifiers, like your dog’s name.
Numbers included in a password should never be something easy to guess based on the user. That means your age, the current year, or your address are not good choices. Similarly, the longer the password the better.
READ MORE: How to protect yourself from security breaches on social media sites
Passwords that use up to ten upper- and lower-case letters mixed with numbers are proven to be more secure – despite being hard to remember.
One tip is to construct a password from a sentence, mix in a few upper case letters and a number – for example, “There is no place like home,” would become “tiNOplh62.”
And remember, try not to use the same password for any two accounts.
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