Personalize Your Passwords

Personalize Your Passwords

Splashdata, an online security firm, released the annual list of the most easily guessed passwords by a hacker, those passwords being the most common in use.

Coming in number nine for 2013, “iloveyou” should remain on your Valentines Day cards and not in your password slot. You will surely be loved by those attempting to crack your password when it’s this easy.

With “sunshine” ranking 19th, that sunshine may turn into a cloudy day when your account gets hacked into.

Those with “trustno1” as a password must trust that nobody could ever guess such an utterly complicated choice of words.

As if “password” is not creative enough, the number two spot on the list, “password1” ranks 21st. I guess adding a one to the end of a word makes it way more creative.

Taking the number one spot on the list is “123456.” This simple choice of numbers is practically begging hackers to do a number on your accounts.

With “adobe123” and “photoshop” also making the list, don’t base your passwords off  of the name of the website or program you’re using. So no using”facebook” or “instagram” as your password.

If any of these or any of the other passwords on the list are what you use to login to an account or accounts of yours, fear not, there are plenty of tips to keep your accounts secure.

Don’t use short passwords. The less characters there are, the easier the password is to crack. Eight characters should be the minimum, using mixed types of characters. Although, don’t make it too complicated, you should still be able to remember it. If you can’t remember, you can simply utilize a password manager.

Even though many common phrases may have at least eight characters, try using your own combination of words, adding characters between each word to separate them, making it all the more unique and harder to decipher.

To put a cherry on top of the password security sundae, try not to use the same password for multiple accounts- even try to avoid using the same username.