The 10 most common passwords

With all the talk of high-level hacking, it’s easy to forget that it is we who make ourselves most vulnerable on a very individual level. SplashData, a leading provider of security applications and services, recently compiled a list of the 25 most common passwords in the United States today. Do not use these on confidential e-mail accounts!

1     123456     
2     password     
3     12345     
4     12345678     
5     qwerty     
6     123456789     
7     1234     
8     baseball     
9     dragon     
10     football     
11     1234567     
12     monkey     
13     letmein     
14     abc123     
15     111111     
16     mustang     
17     access     
18     shadow     
19     master     
20     michael     
21     superman     
22     696969     
23     123123     
24     batman     
25     trustno1

These are the first passwords that a criminal would try when attempting to hack your account. Other types of passwords you want to avoid are birthdays and the names of your children or spouse.

I have had some particularly creative passwords over the years. In the past, I’ve used an employee ID number from a company I worked at in the ’70s. Then I came up with an even better idea, which I can’t divulge for obvious security reasons! The key is to create a password that is unrelated to anything someone might be able to find out about you if they were digging into your background.