Is this your password?

In this day and age, passwords are a fact of life. In fact, if we use a smartphone, social media, other mobile apps, even a profile here on phoneArena.com, we deal with passwords.

It may be hard to believe, but most people do not appreciate the vulnerabilities that are exposed if we do not get even a little bit creative with our passwords. To that end, hackers love those of you that use such lame passwords like “password” and “123456.” Yes, people still use those passwords.

SplashData prepares an annual list of the most common passwords, and believe it or not, the most common (and worst) passwords of 2012 are “password,” “123456,” and “12345678” remain the top three used passwords. Stifles the imagination does it not?

We understand the convenience of easy to remember, easy to type passwords, but making it so easy puts more than just your gaming account at risk. Chances are that if you use a lame password for one account, you probably use a lame password for other accounts (perhaps your bank, PayPal, email?). Aside from the mainstays at the top of the list, there have been some new additions, “welcome,” “ninja,” and “password1” among others. 

Top used passwords of 2012
1. password (Unchanged)
2, 123456 (Unchanged)
3. 12345678 (Unchanged)
4. abc123 (Up 1)
5. qwerty (Down 1)
6. monkey (Unchanged)
7. letmein (Up 1)
8. dragon (Up 2)
9. 111111 (Up 3)
10. baseball (Up 1)
11. iloveyou (Up 2)
12. trustno1 (Down 3)
13. 1234567 (Down 6)
14. sunshine (Up 1)
15. master (Down 1)
16. 123123 (Up 4)
17. welcome (New)
18. shadow (Up 1)
19. ashley (Down 3)
20. football (Up 5)
21. jesus (New)
22. michael (Up 2)
23. ninja (New)
24. mustang (New)
25. password1 (New)

As cloud-based services take a more central role with the smart devices we use, do not think for one minute that using these would be “too simple” to fool anyone. If you are at a loss as to how to come up with memorable, yet strong passwords, try some of these ideas:

Use the first letter of each word of a phrase you like, be it from a song or poem. For example, The Beatles, “Love love me do, you know I love you” becomes “Llmdykily,” then add some numbers and a couple symbols in there too, “1Llmdykily@#.”

Another idea is to combine words, for example, The Terminator’s famous line, “I’ll be back” becomes “illbeback.” Just make sure you are creative, since some phrases are on the list.  Also remember also to mix capitalization which is also helpful with sites that require such measures. You get the idea. 

So, if any of your passwords are on this list, change them. That includes your luggage.