It’s officially World Password Day and now is a very good time to get your digital life in order.
You might have just given your home a quick Spring clean but have you thought about doing the same for your online accounts? If you haven’t checked or changed those endless passwords in a while, then now could be a very good time to make some vital changes. It’s officially World Password Day and that’s giving us all a reminder to make sure we are not putting ourselves at risk of being hacked.
Of course, it’s easy to fall into serious bad habits especially as most of us have far too many online accounts to manage. However, using the same code for multiple platforms along with making them too simple to crack is giving cyber criminals an easy ride.
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According to a recent report, the worst 10 passwords have been used more than eight million times and have been involved in more than 120 million data breaches.
Some of the worst and most common passwords people continue to use are things such as “123456”, “admin” and even “password”. It might sound far-fetched, but millions really do still use that ludicrously easy-to-guess word to secure their accounts.
Want to know what the worst passwords are? There’s a full list below and if yours is on it, then you must change it now.
• 123456
• 123456789
• 1234
• 12345678
• 12345
• password
• 111111
• admin
• 123123
• abc123
There are some other passwords you need to watch out for including using the name of football teams such as “liverpool” or “arsenal” and people’s names such as “charlie”.
Another thing that is not helping when it comes to online security is the vast number of services we all signed up for.
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Security experts at McAfee say that Brits have an average of 47 online accounts and many have potentially vulnerable passwords. This is then exposing users to increased cybersecurity risks.
“Password theft remains a popular means of attack for cybercriminals and once the information has been recovered, it can circulate freely online or be sold to other malicious actors,” McAfee explained.
“In this context, password management is more crucial than ever: 66% of Internet users use the same password for several accounts, while 80% of data breaches are due to poor password security.”
So, how can you beat the hackers and stay safe? There are some pretty simple ways to make sure things stay secure. These include making your passwords stronger by adding numbers, capital letters and symbols.
For example, you can change “liverpool” to something like “L1verP@ol” which instantly makes it harder to crack.
Some new technology from firms such as Apple and Google can even create unhackable passwords for you, which means you don’t have to stress.
McAfee says you should only have one password per account. “A single password for different accounts can be more easily recovered by cybercriminals. It is therefore necessary to use different, hard-to-detect passwords to ensure the security of your accounts,” the experts explained.
Other top tips include using a password manager to help remember your codes and and use cleanup tools to get rid of dormant accounts and bad passwords.