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If Your Password Is On This List, You Should Change It Immediately

Maya Kosoff   

If Your Password Is On This List, You Should Change It Immediately

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Reuters/Vivek Prakash

2014 was not a great year for password security.

Between the Sony leaks, the large-scale iCloud photo hack that resulted in private, naked pictures of celebrities leaking online, and security breaches at companies like Target and Home Depot, it seemed everyone was vulnerable to having their privacy breached.

On Tuesday, password management company SplashData released its annual list of the worst passwords of the last year. SplashData took a look at the 3.3 million passwords that got leaked last year, analyzing the most commonly leaked and least secure passwords.

Most of the passwords on SplashData's list come from North American and Western European users. Unsurprisingly, "123456" and "password" both topped the list this year, but phrases like "monkey," "dragon," and "letmein" also placed in the top 25 list.

To keep your passwords secure, you definitely shouldn't use any of the phrases on SplashData's list. SplashData also recommends using eight-digit or longer passwords with different types of characters (letters, numbers, and symbols); using different username and password combinations for different websites; and using a password manager to protect your passwords and help you generate passwords that are random, and thus more difficult for others to guess correctly.

Here's SplashData's full list. If your password is on here, you should probably consider changing it.

  1. 123456
  2. password
  3. 12345
  4. 12345678
  5. qwerty
  6. 1234567890
  7. 1234
  8. baseball
  9. dragon
  10. football
  11. 1234567
  12. monkey
  13. letmein
  14. abc123
  15. 111111
  16. mustang
  17. access
  18. shadow
  19. master
  20. michael
  21. superman
  22. 696969
  23. 123123
  24. batman
  25. trustno1

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