Despite the recommendations to choose secure, unintuitive passwords with combinations of numbers and letters, the truth is that the classic “123456” is still one of the most used passwords by Internet users. It is revealed by the software and computer security company SplashData, which each year publishes a Top 25 with the worst passwords used during 2012.
Among the worst passwords are words like ‘ninja’, ‘soccer’, ‘dragon’ and ‘I love you’, but the five combinations that top the ranking are, in this order:‘password’, ‘123456’, ‘123456789’, ‘123abc’ y ‘qwerty’.The list is based on information about the most used access codes on the Internet published by computer hackers in the last year.
The company advises users or companies with any of the listed passwords to immediately change their passwords. “As hacking tools get more sophisticated every year, thieves still prefer easy targets,” explains Morgan Slain of SplashData. “Just a little effort when choosing passwords is enough to significantly improve Internet security.”
It is best to use passwords of eight characters or more that alternate several types of characters. The company claims that the safest and easiest thing to do is useshort sentences with spaces or characters that separate words, for example “comer_pastel_a_las_8”. In addition, it is convenient to use different passwords for each website and avoid using the same username and password combination for different services.
