It appears that bad habits die hard. SplashData looked at the passwords that were most often breached in 2011 and came up with a list of the 25 worst passwords to use, according to a report on mashable.com.
If you have a monkey on your back, don’t use it as a password. “Monkey” ranked as the sixth worst password to use. Those who trust no one are not putting their misanthropy to good use, since “trustno1” was ranked as the ninth worst password.
If you proudly declare on Facebook that you are a Jackson Five fan, don’t use “abc123” as your password; that one ranked number five on the worst password list. People who don’t like to wear their emotions on their sleeves are probably safer online than those who do: “iloveyou” was lucky number 13 on the list.
If you are a Boston Red Sox fan, like one news writer at Infosecurity, you probably have changed your password from “baseball.” Good thing. It was number 11 on the list.
“Hackers can easily break into many accounts just by repeatedly trying common passwords. Even though people are encouraged to select secure, strong passwords, many people continue to choose weak, easy-to-guess ones, placing themselves at risk from fraud and identity theft”, Morgan Slain, chief executive of SplashData, was quoted by mashable.com as saying.
The company provided some tips for choosing secure passwords: use numbers, letters and special characters in your passwords when possible; separate short words with spaces or underscores; and do not use the same password and username combination for multiple websites.