e-security

So now its official better to use your goldfish’s name than a string of letters to protect your privacy! This article tells us:

It is a sad day for strings of consecutive numbers hoping to be used as passwords by foolish internet users.

The password 123456 has been named as the worst password of 2014 by online security firm SplashData, and it’s joined in the top 10 by 12345, 12345678, 123456789 and 1234.

The company publishes the chart annually, and yes, SplashData makes password management software. But it claims its “worst passwords” rankings are based on hard data: a list of 3.3m leaked passwords last year.

The numerical passwords are joined in the latest top 10 by “password”, “qwerty”, “baseball”, “dragon” and “football”, with the analysis based on leaked passwords in North America and western Europe – hence no inclusion of Russian terms, which SplashData claims are also common in mass-leaks.

“Passwords based on simple patterns on your keyboard remain popular despite how weak they are,” said chief executive Morgan Slain.

“Any password using numbers alone should be avoided, especially sequences. As more websites require stronger passwords or combinations of letters and numbers, longer keyboard patterns are becoming common passwords, and they are still not secure.”