“Unlocking Danger: Are Your Passwords on This Hacker’s No-Go List?”
After a good read on password security, you might find yourself itching to change yours up—like it’s the hot new trend everyone’s talking about. But here’s the deal: you want a password that’s a tricky little nugget for hackers to crack, yet something you can remember on a Tuesday afternoon when all your brain cells have gone on vacation. Aim for a delightful blend of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols that would make any cybercriminal weep in frustration. Just don’t go crafting something so elaborate that you forget it yourself, leading to a grand treasure hunt for that sneaky semicolon! So, let’s dive into the do’s and don’ts of password creation and expose the most popular passwords you should definitely avoid. I mean, is “123456” really still a thing? Oh boy, let’s explore—your online safety might depend on it! LEARN MORE
After reading this, you might have a strong urge to go out and change your password.
You want something you’ll remember but that’ll be hard to crack, so a good mixture of upper and lowercase letters along with numbers and symbols is a safe shout.
Of course, you don’t want it to be so hard to crack that you yourself forget what it was and you’re stuck trying to remember where in the convoluted sequence you put the semicolon.
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Remember the rules for a good password, have a mix of letters, symbols and numbers that are hard to guess. (Getty Stock Photo)
It’s also frustrating when the ‘suggested password’ Google will tell you it remembers for you gets forgotten and you have no idea what it was, so strive for something that’s memorable to you but hard to guess.
According to The Daily Mail, ethical hacker Joe Cockroft has got a warning for the thousands of Brits who use some incredibly common passwords to protect themselves online.
He says using any ‘identifiable information’ makes it so much easier for hackers to determine your password.
He continued: “While this information may be easy to remember, it could also be easy for threat actors to figure out after a short time exploring your social media profiles, for example.”
The website NordPass has compiled the most common passwords in the country, and their top 10 for the UK are full of the usual suspects.
12345
“Once I caught a fish alive…”
This is such a blatantly bad password, but it’s also one of the 10 most popular ones in use around the UK.
Perhaps more worryingly it’s got plenty of global appeal, so if you ever decide to become a hacker, your first moves might just be inputting the most blatantly obvious answers first.
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“I’m in… it was really easy.” (Getty Stock Photo)
123456
According to NordPass, this is the most common password in the UK and hackers can crack it in under a second.
Once again, it’s really not very hard to guess why this is such a vulnerable password.
Funnily enough, the second most popular password in the world doesn’t quite crack the UK’s top 10 – though we still wouldn’t recommend it.
That other password is ‘admin’, oh dear.
12345678
Another creative variation upon the numerical passwords that are easy as pie to crack.
It’s only slightly less popular than another numerical sequence which is insultingly easy to guess.
123456789
Oh dear, a prospective hacker could guess this one just by sliding their finger across the keyboard.
While the ethical hacker said you ought to avoid trying to make passwords out of personal details this one is also just utterly terrible from a security standpoint.
I hope nothing important has the ‘123456’ password. (Getty Stock Photo)
abc123
On the plus side, this is the only password in the UK’s top 10 list to actually combine letters and numbers.
All you need now is an uppercase letter and a symbol and one of those password checking widgets would probably say this was a pretty strong password.
But don’t do that, it’d still be ridiculously easy to crack into.
password
No prizes for guessing this is the second most popular password in the country after ‘123456’.
If you want ‘password’ to be your password then by all means go right ahead, you’ll never forget it and have to do some sort of reset function but it’ll probably be pretty much useless to you at stopping anyone from getting in.
When it comes to guessing someone’s password, just putting in ‘password’ has got to be a pretty popular attempt, so please pick something else.
Hackers can crack easy passwords in mere moments. (Getty Stock Photo)
qwerty
This is almost as bad as having ‘123456’ as your password, it’s just the equivalent of using letters instead of numbers.
The keys themselves are directly below the UK’s most popular password, so it might just be best to ditch any dreams of using ‘qwerty’ or variations upon as your password.
There’s a reason it’s the third most popular password in use in the UK.
liverpool
The ethical hacker also advised people to avoid using things like the name of their favourite football team as their password.
Liverpool was the most popular football team name to be used as a password in the UK.
At time of writing, they’ve got the best defence in the Premier League, so make sure your password is like them in deed instead of in name and be solid.
If you’re thinking about using your football team as your password, think harder. (PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images)
arsenal
The trouble with hackers is they’re always trying to walk it in, and if you’re gonna pick a football team for your password then please think again.
That’s about all the Arsenal jokes I can think of off the top of my head, if your password is ‘arsenal’ then please go and change it now.
chelsea
The above advice applies for Chelsea fans too, or fans of pretty much any football club who decides to make it their password.
We’re all sharing loads of stuff online, so any hackers looking for inspiration to your passwords will likely be able to figure out what club you support with a search engine and just a few seconds of time.
According to Joe, if you want a fool-proof password then it should have a complex form of numbers, letters and symbols, and that you should regularly check if your password is compromised – in which case, change it quickly.
Please be safe with your passwords.
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