10 Most Commonly Hacked Passwords

So much of our information is online that it’s a little scary to think of what might be lost and corrupted if our passwords don’t hold up. Financial information can be gleaned, business data stolen and for physicians, a poor password could mean a hacker getting into patient files now that almost all of it is online.

Every year SpashDatal reveals its annual list of the most common passwords used on the Internet. These passwords are gathered because they’re actually posted by hackers. Over the past year there have been a number of high-profile password hacking incidents at sites like Yahoo!, Linkedin and eHarmony.

All of the passwords on the list are easily guessable as many people choose something that either will be easy for them to remember or quick to type in. A weak password is often taken advantage of by hackers.

“Even though each year hacking tools get more sophisticated, thieves still tend to prefer easy targets,” Morgan Slain, SplashData chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Just a little bit more effort in choosing better passwords will go a long way toward making you safer online.”

SplashData suggests mixing characters, numbers and symbols and avoid using the same username/password combination for multiple sites.

The top three most common passwords, and thus the most likely to lead to future security breaches, are unchanged in 2012 from the previous year, which just goes to show that not only are they predictable, but people haven’t learned at all.

SplashData’s list includes 25 horrible passwords that people should avoid using. Here are the 10 worst. If you see a familiar looking password, you should go and change it immediately.

10. Baseball

2011: 11

9. 111111

2011: 12

8. Dragon

2011: 10

7. Letmein

2011: 8

6. Monkey

2011: 6

5. Qwerty

2011: 4

4. Abc123

2011: 5

3. 12345678

2011: 3

2. 123456

2011: 2

1. Password

2011: 1

Read more:

Scary Logins: Worst Passwords of 2012 — And How to Fix Them - SplashData