Most Common Passwords from 2012

SplashData recently reported on the 25 worst passwords of the year—meaning they were the 25 most common, real passwords that hackers posted on their websites. If you recognize any of the following as your own, then beware that your account could be easily hacked, especially since the public has been made aware of them now.

1. Password
2. 123456
3. 12345678
4. Abc123
5. Qwerty
6. Monkey
7. Letmein
8. Dragon
9. 111111
10. Baseball
11. iloveyou
12. Trutno1
13. 1234567
14. Sunshine
15. Master
16. 123123
17. Welcome
18. Shadow
19. Ashley
20. Football
21. Jesus
22. Michael
23. Ninja
24. Mustang
25. Password1

Choosing a new password can be a pain. The most common advice to secure your password is to add a number, capital letter and symbol. For example: Tweet@1, or PE&beta9. The only problem is, these passwords are easily forgotten, making them useless for you.

One of the best ways to make your password easier to secure without using capital letters, numbers and symbols is to simply make the password longer and use terms that are familiar to you—like a list of your hobbies, or lyrics to your favorite song. For example, if your favorite things are lemon pie, Dodge Viper and the color red, then you can create the following password: redlemonpiedodgeviper. You can draw a lemon pie in a red Dodge Viper to remind yourself of the password, should you ever forget. With an impossibly high amount of possibilities, a random character generator will find it to difficult to hack.

Password is the number one password because it’s so easy to remember. 123456 is pretty easy too, but they aren’t the only things that are easy to remember. Lengthen your password and make it a string of meaningful words to you. This will help you avoid being the next on the hacker’s hit list. Update your password if you haven’t already, and make it something you can remember.