Guess the Internet’s Top 10 Worst Passwords of 2016

Nov 21, 2016

If we’re talking about first world problems, conjuring up an online password can be a real struggle.

While many portals will insist you abide by their guidelines of including a number, letters, and other characters (such as ‘#’) in your password, the problem comes when you have five different login details to remember… and not a clue which combination of characters Twitter is looking for.

It’s a well known fact that most of us tend to use the same password for all of our online accounts. And that’s bad. Very bad. It’s opening the door to a whole range of potential security problems, especially if your online/mobile banking accounts are involved. But we still do it.

Internet users are increasingly making it easier for hackers to access their accounts.

A recently leaked Yahoo database has uncovered the most commonly used passwords, and they’re pretty shocking.

123456
password
welcome
ninja
abc123
123456789
12345678
sunshine
princess
qwerty

Dr Jeff Yan, co-author of a paper on password guessing, asks: “Why do [some] use such obvious passwords? A main reason I think is that they’re either unaware of or don’t understand the risks of online security.

“Just like everybody knows what one should do when red lights are on in the road, eventually everybody will know 123456 or the like is not a good password choice.” Here’s hoping we’ve triggered you to change YOUR password if it’s any of the above.