Despite incessant warnings from security experts, many people are still found using weak and easily guessable passwords to protect their web accounts and devices.
California based security firm SplashData has discovered this fact and has revealed the list of the worst passwords used in 2017 which has been taken from the 5 million passwords leaked this year. And this includes Equifax data breach to Yahoo’s bombshell announcement of data spill of over 1 billion accounts.
And can you guess the password which leads the list of Worst Passwords of 2017…?
It’s none other than ‘123456’ followed by ‘Password’.
Yes, you’ve read it right. For some reason, the above said two words have long maintained their hold as most used passwords among internet users and they have been holding this position for the past 3 years ( 2015-2017).
At the third place stands the numerical order of ‘12345678’ which is followed by ‘Qwerty’.
Fifth place has a newcomer in the form of ‘Starwars’ which is said to be a dangerous password to use says Morgan Slain, the CEO of SplashData.
Words such as ‘Letmein’, ‘Iloveu’ and ‘Football’ are also among those topping the list.
Researchers of SplashData has found in their study that hackers are using well-known terms from pop culture and sports to break into the accounts of web service users because they know that people often use these words as ‘passwords’ as they are easy to remember.
In this year, web users were also found to be using several car names as login credentials. And among those names such as Ferrari and Mercedes stand tall among them.
Experts say that adding just a number or a symbol has become ineffective these days. As hackers have become sophisticated and are found using software which offers permutations and combinations of alpha-numeric and special characters to break into the accounts.
And the report released by the security firm says that a quarter of people use the same passwords for every site they are signed up to.
If you are one among those who are using one or all the above-said words as passwords to access web services, then Cybersecurity Insiders requests you to change them on an immediate note.
