BoingBoing has the 500 worst passwords. We'll sum it up: if your password is password, 123456, or 696969, say goodbye to your identity.
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The links aren't working for me, but I always abide by these rules:
1. Use a combination of alpha, numeric, and special characters (!@#$ etc). Bonus points if the password is case sensitive and you use a combination of upper and lower case alpha characters.
2. Use as many total characters as you can remember. (8 characters is much better than 4).
3. Don't use words commonly found in the dictionary, start making them up if you have to.
4. Don't use the same password on every site.
I'm sure there's more...
I used to use PASSWORD for all my work applications until the IT guy told me I needed better ones.
I can't tell you how many public wi-fi spots have "admin" as the username and password, or just "admin" and no password, since that's the default for most routers.
I want to crush the head of the person who uses "success" as his password.
I like how "trustno1" is #32
Someone ought to do an analysis - 15% are obscene, 3% are numbers (does 696969 come under one heading or two?), 2% are from LOTR, etc.
Gandalf has gone down in the world - he used to be in the top 10.
I can't believe how many people use their FIRST NAME as their password. The mind, it boggles!
For things that I need really secure, I use a sentence, minus the spaces. I got the idea from Sneakers(No, mine is not, "My name is the password"). It allows you to add punctuation marks, capitol letters, etc... and can be quite easy to remember. Mine is currently 25 characters, and I never really have to think about it. Whenever I enter it somewhere that rates your password when you create it, it always comes up "very strong".
"12345? That's the stupidest password I've ever heard. It's the kind of combination an idiot would put on his luggage!"
/oblig
I recently started using 1Password. I previously used a small handful of so-so passwords for everything. Now I've got super-strong unique passwords for all the important stuff. They also have an iPhone app too so I'm not screwed when I need to check stuff on the go. Mac folks should definitely check it out.
My password is impossible to guess:
okdy8*hhdt%$#G&TT
111111 and 11111111 are listed but 1111111 is not. Whew, I'm safe...
mustang???
What if your password is a combination of all 500 of those?
my password is *******
/sarcasm
Ah, i guess it'd be too much to think no one would make the Spaceballs ref before me.
=(
Nonsense. Everyone knows that the most popular passwords, in order, are love, sex, secret and god.
I don't know about this list. "o" appears twice.
I had a bank site ask me for my Dad's middle name (as an additional security level) and it rejected it as "too short".
Now, then, as I so meticulously pointed out, the four most-used passwords are: love, sex, secret, and God. So, would your holiness care to change her password?
I'm with the guy in that article commentor's list: I'm stunned that there was no "reindeer", "flotilla" or "reindeerflotilla" anywhere. I guess anyone nerdy enough to watch TRON is nerdy enough to know how to pick a strong password :)
If you just use a combo of line 44 you get sexy-gandalf-5150-leather-cumming....now that's disturbing, and hacker safe!
@bnelson333: Numbers and special characters really aren't necessary. What you shouldn't do is use single dictionary words or obvious phrases. My most frequent password is a phrase that is completely impossible to guess, but I remember it because they're all real words.
Sorry... I just hate it when websites force you to use a number or something. Those are invariably the sites I forget my password for. There are enough letters in the alphabet to make a secure password.
Damn, How do I change my commentor password?
:-p