Most people know they don’t use secure passwords, and the main reason is that you have a lot of passwords and complicated passwords take a while to write. If you get a minute over Christmas it’s an ideal time to have a cleanup.
Avoid these common passwords
According to SplashData, the most common passwords on the web are:
- password
- 123456
- 12345678
- qwerty
- abc123
- monkey
- 1234567
- letmein
- trustno1
- dragon
- baseball
- 111111
- iloveyou
- master
- sunshine
- ashley
- bailey
- passw0rd
- shadow
- 123123
- 654321
- superman
- qazwsx
- michael
- football
Simple but secure passwords
However all is not lost, having a secure password isn’t as hard as it sounds. Firstly you need a password that fits most of the ‘rules’ you find when creating a password:
- About 8 characters
- A mix of numbers and letters
- A mix of upper and lowercase
The key is to come up with a phrase that helps you to remember a password, using the characters and numbers with real names and pronouns capitalised. Here are some examples:
- My sister Elizabeth turned 30 before me ~ MsEt30bm
- If I eat 2 donuts I will be fat ~ iIe2dIwbf
Every password different?
Ideally yes, but in reality it’s just not possible unless you use a program – which is only as secure as your computer.
Definitely for anything valuable and especially online banking, PayPal or any other payment method; not used anywhere else and not the same one. If someone hacks your current account then you’ll want your other accounts secured. Additionally, use a unique password for your email because it’s where you store and get reminded about your other passwords.
But for logins like a survey website, a forum and all that other ‘unimportant stuff’ there is still a value to keeping those secure, especially as many link to each other, but perhaps to a lesser extent. Start with a ‘nub’ that follows the rules but is slightly shorter so you can add to it, eg. w3Koz and then add on 3 characters from the site name.
- Boots.com password could be W3Kozots
- Recipes.com password could be W3Kozpes
But I don’t have time!
Trust us, it is worth making just a little effort – especially to simplify things. In fact, having fewer online logins is probably the simplest way to improve your security, and then secondarily reducing the amount of cross logins – does that site really need access to your Facebook account or Twitter?
