Weak passwords are raising people’s vulnerability

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With so many social accounts, electronic devices and what not, it is becoming very hard for most people to keep track of their passwords for each account they have. That is why a lot of them, (in most cases unaware of the risk they’re taking), choose to have one single password for all of their accounts and devices.

What’s even worse, the passwords chosen are weak, making them vulnerable to identity theft and many other risks that would not even exist in the first place, have they chosen different and strong passwords.

Furthermore, older generations which have not been used to this fast-changing technology are still trying to figure out this new world for them. And since the older you get the weaker your memory gets (not always), older generations try to pick an easy password that they will be able to remember the next time they log in.

According to acunetix.com, here are a few findings after thousands of passwords were leaked online in 2009, 2010, and 2013.

·         “In 2009, over 10,000 Hotmail passwords were leaked online. An analysis of these passwords revealed that a staggering 42% of them contained only lowercase alpha characters (a-z) and the majority of passwords were between 6-9 characters long.”

·         “In 2010, details of over one million Gawker media website users were leaked online. These details included usernames, e-mail addresses and passwords. Shockingly, the most popular password was “123456” with “password” in second place. Several hundred users chose to use the name of one of the Gawker media websites (e.g. “gizmodo”, “lifehack”) as their password.”

·         “In 2013, a dump containing user data such as usernames, e-mail addresses, password hashes, and password hints for millions of Adobe customers was leaked online. Inspired by this leak, a list of the worst passwords of 2013 was published that shows passwords like “password1”, “letmein”, and “123456” are more common than we think.”

According to Business Insider, researchers at LeakedSource who were able to encrypt thousands of passwords, found out that  a lot of people use the same  weak passwords such as ‘123456’ used by 753,305 people,  followed by ‘linkedin’ used by 172,523 people, ‘password’ used by 144,458 people, etc. Data for top 49 passwords most used passwords included ‘123456789’, ‘12345678’, ‘111111’, ‘1234567’, ‘sunshine’, ‘qwerty’, ‘654321’, ‘000000’, ‘password1’, ‘abc123’, ‘princess’, ‘iloveyou’, ‘shadow’ , etc.

If any of your password matches with one of the most used passwords worldwide, make sure to change it a soon as you can. We suggest you to pick a password that it is not only challenging for you to remember, but also contains uppercase letters, numbers, etc. When you feel that your password will be very hard to crack, you will not only protect your identity, but also have a peace of mind and lower your vulnerability risks.

 

Image Source: www.tricerion.com


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