The 25 worst passwords of 2012 are listed by a password management company called SplashData. Following is the list of the 25 passwords, along with the change in rank from last year.
1. password (Unchanged)
2. 123456 (Unchanged)
3. 12345678 (Unchanged)
4. abc123 (Up 1)
5. qwerty (Down 1),
6. monkey (Unchanged)
7. letmein (Up 1)
8. dragon (Up 2), 9. 111111 (Up 3), 10. baseball (Up 1), 11. iloveyou (Up 2), 12. trustno1 (Down 3),13. 1234567 (Down 6)， 14. sunshine (Up 1), 15. master (Down 1), 16. 123123 (Up 4), 17. welcome (New), 18. shadow (Up 1), 19. ashley (Down 3), 20. football (Up 5), 21. jesus (New), 22. michael (Up 2), 23. ninja (New),24. mustang (New), 25. password1 (New)
Are you using one or some of these common passwords listed above as your Windows password, email password, credit card password, etc. Why you use these weak passwords? Just because you don’t know the rules for a strong password or these common passwords are easy to remember for you?
For the former, you can follow the rules listed below to set up a strong password.
* A strong password should be a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.
* The password should be at least 8 characters long to make sure it strong enough.
* Don’t contain complete words or personal information like birthdate, company name, etc. in your password as these details can be easily cracked.
For the latter, it’s not a big problem actually. A great number of ways out there can help you create a strong password that’s easy to remember. Following are two example methods.
Method 1. Pick the first letters of words in a sentence that is meaningful and easy-to-remember to you. Punctuation mark should also included in your password For example, My sister’s birthday is 26 October, 1982. Your password could be “msbi2O, 1” if you take this method.
Mehod 2. Pick up of the first letters of your favorite things and combine the picked letters as your passwords. For example, my favorite pet is cat and dog. My favorite number is 6 and 9. And My favorite fruit is Orange and* is my favorite symbol. By following this guide, the password could be “ca6do9O*”
Still afraid of forgetting your password? Take it easy! Some tools come with built-in feature to get rid of forgotten Windows password. For example, Windows 7 allows you to create a password reset disk before you forgot its logon password. With this previously disk, you can easily change your password when you forgot Windows 7 password.
In addition, there are many password managers available to help you keep track of your passwords. KeePass is a stand-out one. This free, open source password mange tool allows you to store all passwords in an encrypted database. All you need to remember is to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. This Windows application comes with OS X- and Linux-compatible version and portable version. All users can use this tool to remember their passwords.