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20 WORST PASSWORDS OF YEAR 2017

Just like the keys to your houses or cars, do you know your “online keys” are even more important? These online keys are simply your passwords and passphrases used to login to your personal or workplace accounts such as computer logons, online portals, internet banking platforms as well as the social media platforms.

Image from Pixabay

So how conscious are you concerning your passwords and how strong they are? Year 2017 witnessed a lot of online hack cases across the world, yet people still use passwords like '123456', “password”, “abcde”, and so on.

According to a research carried out by SplashData; They examined more than 5 million passwords that were leaked in 2017. Taking the top two spots for the fourth consecutive year are the old standbys, "123456" and "password." A number of variations of each, such as "123456789" and "passw0rd" also made the list.

Here are the top 20 worst passwords of 2017:

1. 123456

2. password

3. 12345678

4. qwerty

5. 12345

6. 123456789

7. letmein

8. 1234567

9. football

10. iloveyou

11. admin

12. welcome

13. monkey

14. login

15. abc123

16. starwars

17. 123123

18. dragon

19. passw0rd

20. master

WHAT IS THE WAY FORWARD?

It’s simple, pay closer attention to what you use to formulate your passwords. if your password is found on the above list, you should change it immediately! Recommended approach is using phrases of 8 characters or more, with mixed types of characters including upper and lower cases. Users should also create different passwords for each login.

Here are four simple password rules that can be used;

1. Must be up to 8 characters

1. Must contain both upper case and lower-case letters

2. Must contain at least 1 digit, and

3. Must contain at least 1 special character (e.g. #@%!)

Wishing everyone a secured year 2018 ahead!