Think you have a strong password! Think again.

In a recent Github project they discovered the most popular passwords around the globe are: 

  • 123456
  • Password 
  • 12345678
  • Qwerty
  • 123456789

Hopefully, you’re not reading those and recognising any of your passwords in there.

Common passwords aren’t the only problem – on top of that people tend to use the same password across multiple sites, another big no, no.

Are you one of the people who choose a favourite pet, child’s name, football club, etc?

 

The most cited reason for this is generally people have a bad memory. The thought of creating a different password for each site and then remembering it is just too much of a pain, especially as many sites have now added the addition of numbers and special symbols to be compliant. The most common addition people make for this is adding their birth year or age to the end of a password with a symbol, for example, Qwerty1975!

As technology advances and we reveal more of our personal information online, it’s becoming easier for hackers to crack your password. 

90% of passwords can be cracked in less than six hours.

 

It’s often recommended that you combine 2 or 3 words to create a new word, that isn’t a real word. This can prevent IT programs from cracking the password as quickly (or at all). If you replace letters with numbers (e.g. I becomes ! and A becomes 4) or symbols it becomes harder still.  Example: QuatumPumpkin could be Qu4tumPumpk!n 

One of my favourite methods is to pick a favourite song and use the 1st letter of each word.

Example: The U2 song “Where the streets have no name” would be “wtshnn”. Add a random number, capital letter, or symbols such as w!shNN and you’ve got something that would be fairly tricky to guess but easy to remember. 

Think about this…an eight-character password using just upper or lower case letters has 200 billion potential combinations to crack it, although software can do this quickly. Change it to a combination of upper, lower case, symbols, and numbers and it becomes 5 trillion billion combinations and possibly not worth their time trying.  

If you are one of those people that is never going to remember regardless of the tips and tricks then there are quite a few choices of software to store passwords securely. They can normally offer a service of creating a complicated password for you as well as saving you the worry. 

Our favourite is Lastpass but there are plenty of others to choose from. 

Join the conversation over on our social channels and let us know what your favourite tricks are to create complex passwords and more importantly remember them.

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