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20 popular and easy to guess passwords!

// January 30th, 2010 // Tech News

If you want to protect your online accounts from hackers, rule number one is to select strong, hard to guess passwords.

However, a recent report by the guys at Internet security firm Impervia, suggests that Internet users are still relying on the same kind of predictable passwords that they used a decade ago.

Password strength

Impervia released a list of the top 20 passwords, which were found when RockYou.com was hacked last month.  According to Impervia, these were strikingly similar to the passwords used on Hotmail.com, when that too was breached almost 20 years ago!

Starting with the most commonly used, the 20 most popular passwords were:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123
11. Nicole
12. Daniel
13. babygirl
14. monkey
15. Jessica
16. Lovely
17. michael
18. Ashley
19. 654321
20. Qwerty

It’s clear for all to see that many people are still using predictable strings of letters and numbers and names as their passwords.  Obviously, if you are using ANY of these, it’s a good idea to change it for something stronger; to avoid the risk of a brute force attack.

Password tips

A pdf on the Impervia website gives some more detail AND some good advice on how to build strong, memorable, passwords.

Image credit: The English Guy

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