Worst passwords of 2017

THE PIRATES ARE AWAITING ...

And it is so easy to hack into so many accounts - simply because passwords are created by people with no imagination.

All the pirates need to do is tap in one or more of the most popular passwords, and there they go.  Into your private email, and into your banking account.

Popular, you say?  Yes, it seems that password choice is a matter of (a) fashion (b) a person's love of his or her own name, or (c) a non-random sequence of numbers.

As they comment in the New York Times, the choice says a lot about ourselves.

“Starwars” (No. 16) reflects a resurgent force in popular culture.

“Whatever” (No. 23) and “letmein” (No. 7) seem to speak to an exasperation with online security itself.

And “password” (No. 2) speaks to our collective lack of creativity.

They are among the 11 new entrants to the annual “worst passwords” list, compiled by SplashData, a company that creates applications for password management and security. The popularity and simplicity of those passwords pose risks for those who use them, the company said.

“Hackers know your tricks, and merely tweaking an easily guessable password does not make it secure,” Morgan Slain, SplashData’s chief executive, said in a news release. “Our hope is that our Worst Passwords of the Year list will cause people to take steps to protect themselves online.”

The analysis was based on more than five million leaked passwords, most of them used by people in North America and Western Europe.

And here (tra-la) are the 25 worst passwords:

 SplashData’s “Worst Passwords of 2017”:

1 - 123456 (rank unchanged since 2016 list) 
2 - password (unchanged) 
3 - 12345678 (up 1) 
4 - qwerty (Up 2) 
5 - 12345 (Down 2) 
6 - 123456789 (New) 
7 - letmein (New) 
8 - 1234567 (Unchanged) 
9 - football (Down 4) 
10 - iloveyou (New) 
11 - admin (Up 4) 
12 - welcome (Unchanged) 
13 - monkey (New) 
14 - login (Down 3) 
15 - abc123 (Down 1) 
16 - starwars (New) 
17 - 123123 (New) 
18 - dragon (Up 1) 
19 - passw0rd (Down 1) 
20 - master (Up 1) 
21 - hello (New) 
22 - freedom (New) 
23 - whatever (New) 
24 - qazwsx (New) 
25 - trustno1 (New)

SplashData estimates almost 10% of people have used at least one of the 25 worst passwords on this year’s list, and nearly 3% of people have used the worst password, 123456.

SplashData offers three simple tips to be safer from hackers online:

1. Use passphrases of twelve characters or more with mixed types of characters including upper and lower cases. 
2. Use a different password for each of your website logins. If a hacker gets your 
password they will try it to access other sites. 
3. Protect your assets and personal identity by using a password manager to organize passwords, generate secure random passwords, and automatically log into websites.

To help protect computer users from hackers and to do its part in preventing 2018 from becoming another “Year of the Hack,” SplashData is offering the full list of Top 100 Worst Passwords, a free one-year subscription for individuals to its Gpass password manager, and a TeamsID (password manager for enterprise workgroups) demo for businesses. 

I just hope you are not one of the number....