There’s one good outcome from the Yahoo breach (a hacker defeated Yahoo’s firewalls, stole 450,000 accounts, and proceeded to post the user names and passwords onlines). You know all that dire advice about using numbers and letters and symbols in passwords? Turns out the Yahoo users didn’t. A peek at their twenty favorite passwords makes it clear once more that the biggest impediment to computer security remains human users:
- 123456′ used by 1666 (0.38%)
- ‘password’ used by 780 (0.18%)
- welcome’ used by 436 (0.1%)
- ‘ninja’ used by 333 (0.08%)
- ‘abc123’ used by 250 (0.06%)
- ‘123456789’ used by 222 (0.05%)
- ‘12345678’ used by 208 (0.05%)
- ‘sunshine’ used by 205 (0.05%)
- ‘princess’ used by 202 (0.05%)
- ‘qwerty’ used by 172 (0.04%)
If you’re thinking this looks familiar, you’re right. Here are the top 25 from 2011:
- password
- 123456
- 12345678
- qwerty
- abc123
- monkey
- 1234567
- letmein
- trustno1
- dragon
- baseball
- 111111
- iloveyou
- master
- sunshine
- ashley
- bailey
- passw0rd
- shadow
- 123123
- 654321
- superman
- qazwsx
- michael
- Football
Let’s review Password 101:
- include different types of letters, numbers and special characters
- longer is better
- use different passwords for different accounts
I’m happy to share that my passwords aren’t on either of these lists. How about yours?
Comic credit: XKCD
Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
