No matter how often you hear about it, people are still using horrible insecure passwords. In related news, those people should expect that their accounts will get hacked if they haven’t already suffered multiple hacks.
The list of most popular passwords of 2016 has been released and it really isn’t any better than previous years. Don’t believe me? I have also written about the most popular passwords of 2015 and most popular passwords of 2014. The lists haven’t changed much as you can see from the 2016 list below.
- 123456
- 123456789
- qwerty
- 12345678
- 111111
- 1234567890
- 1234567
- password
- 123123
- 987654321
- qwertyuiop
- mynoob
- 123321
- 666666
- 18atcskd2w
- 7777777
- 1q2w3e4r
- 654321
- 555555
- 3rjs1la7qe
- 1q2w3e4r5t
- 123qwe
- zxcvbnm
- 1q2w3e
I can hear many of you grumbling about how hard it is to remember all your passwords and I’m not going to listen to it. It is not hard to have very secure passwords and to remember all of them. I have hundreds of them!
The key is to use a utility to help. My choice is Roboform. Yes, it has a small cost. But what is the cost of getting hacked? How much time (money) do you waste trying to remember your passwords.
When I need to create a new password, I use the Generate function of Roboform. It asks me what flavor of characters to include and the length I require as you can see in the dialog below.
After you create a login, you’ll save it to Roboform. Come back to a site that requires a login and you’ll be given choices of which login to use for that site as you can see below.
All you need to remember is the master password that unlocks the Roboform vault. One of my screenshots is from Firefox, another is from Google. Yes, it works with most browsers. It also works on Android and iOS devices. So all of your logins work on all of your devices. I don’t have to remember if I brought the sticky note with me, all the passwords go with me!
I hope I don’t have to write a similar blog in another year. I wish hacking would be a thing of the past. But I know many of you will change nothing and will continue to use insecure passwords and then wonder why you get hacked.
First, I *do not* use any password on this list. But I must be missing something here; why is 3rjs1la7qe a bad one?
The list is of the most popular passwords. So if something appears on this list, it is used very often. Most likely the passwords on the list that appear secure at first glance are in use by robots in large numbers. Most importantly you need to make up your own random passwords and they need to be different for EVERY site.