As we bid adieu to 2018, we must take the New Year resolution of never using ‘123456’ as password ever again. According to TeamsID, the worst password of 2018 is once again 123456, which also remains the most easiest to crack of all passwords used across online services.
A list of 100 worst passwords released by TeamsID suggests that 123456 remains the worst password while password was the second worst overall. The third worst password was 123456789 while 12345678 was the fourth bad password. The fifth in the list was 12345, which should not come as a surprise. The top 10 worst password list is rounded up by 111111 in number six, 1234567 in number seven, sunshine in number eight, qwerty in number nine and iloveyou in number 10.
The list only shows that consumers have not changed their behavior of using the most common passwords to protect their online behavior or activity. The list includes passwords such as princess, admin, welcome, 666666 and abc123 in the top fifteen list. These passwords have been proven to be easiest to crack but they are still very much in use across web platforms.
In an era, where we are doing everything online – from purchasing groceries to booking a cab to selecting your dream home, the least one can do is use a much stronger and secure password. The curation of worst password by TeamsID shows that people use football, 123123, monkey, 654321 and !@#$%^&* (which is basically Shift + 12345678) as their password.
According to Symantec, customers who were victims of cyber crime globally lost $172 billion in 2017 while an average victim lost $142 (around Rs 10,000). It says Indians lost $18.5 billion to cyber crime and adds that 978 million adults in 20 countries globally experienced cyber crime. One of the key insight from the report was that an average cyber crime victim spent nearly 24 hours globally dealing with the aftermath. In India, that number grows to 50 hours or 6 working days.
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One of the easiest ways to avoid falling victim to cyber crime is by using a stronger password and one that does not end with 123456. The second major step one can take is to use a password manager or using authentication keys for enrolling yourself into web-based services via two-factor authentication. The last thing to do is change your password to something that is a combination of text, number and symbols if you have been using ‘password’ as your password for the entire year.
The post PSA: 123456 and password are still the worst password of 2018 appeared first on BGR India.
