Every year millions of passwords get leaked. This means that there is a lot of data out there that makes for some unfortunate situations!
The majority of hacks and data breaches could be easily prevented with basic security measures. Between you and your web host, both of you need to be regularly changing your passwords, ensuring that you don’t repeat passwords, and making them tough by using upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.
If you choose to run your own servers, as opposed to managed hosting like BlueHost, you’re taking full responsibility for your site and server management, which makes this even more critical.
Even the biggest data breaches have often been at least partially caused by: (1) passwords that hadn’t been changed in months or years; or (2) no two-step authentication being used. If you need (un)inspiration, check out the most commonly used passwords:
123456
Year after year after year, the most common password is “123456”. There’s no telling why everyone wants to stop at six, but it may be a common minimum character requirement for many sites. Never use this, or any sequential number sequence. Another repeat offender is “password”, which comes in at number two. You’re not being clever, and any hacker with her salt will try this one. At number three is “12345”, proving that, yes, five character minimums are also common.
Fourth place goes to “12345678”, which is perhaps thanks to people who put a little more effort into creating their passwords, but of course nowhere near enough. Other popular passwords include “qwerty”, which might feel easy to type, but you can’t choose a password that’s literally the name of the most common keyboard in North America.
There are various other combinations of sequential numbers starting with “1” all the way up to “9” too, but you can bet that hackers try all of these combinations first.
The Same Passwords
People who use the most common passwords are also likely to use the same ones for various sites. If someone gets into a part of your server, what’s next? They might try banks and other online sites where more valuable data is stored.
Surprisingly, there is also some new common passwords that have popped up in recent times. These include “baseball”, “dragon”, and “football”. “Mustang” is another fresh entrant, however, they’re largely overshadowed by classics like “letmein” (let me in), “abc123”, and “111111”.
Rounding out the list is “shadow” and “123123”. Some people may have thought they were savvy with “access”, “master”, “superman,” or “Michael” too. And as for “696969”? Well, let’s hope that’s just a sign that there are a lot more teens at least trying to protect their information online – although they need to try a bit harder!
