Small Business

WTF: Millions Still Using '123456' as Their Password

By Rick Broida

Updated on: January 22, 2010 / 2:24 PM EST / MoneyWatch

How's this for weird? Recently, some 32 million passwords were stolen from social-networking service RockYou and released into the wild by the hacker who nabbed them. Data-security firm Imperva analyzed the collection and made a shocking discovery -- shocking, at least, to those of us who have been preaching about password security for years.

According to Imperva, the most commonly used passwords were as follows:

123456
12345
123456789
Password
iloveyou
princess
rockyou
1234567
12345678
abc123

Excuse me while I collect my jaw from the ground. I'd like to think these shockingly poor passwords choices stem can be easily explained, that most visitors to a site like RockYou are A) kids or B) looky-loos, both of whom don't know better or don't care about password security for that particular destination.

But I suspect it's part of the ongoing epidemic of users who just don't have a clue when it comes to choosing secure passwords. If you happen to be one of them (or know someone who is), please see any or all of these previous posts on the subject:

While you're at it, download Imperva's report: Consumer Password Worst Practices. It's interesting, and informative, reading.

Rick Broida

Rick Broida, a technology writer for more than 20 years, is the author of more than a dozen books. In addition to writing CNET's The Cheapskate blog, he contributes to CNET's iPhone Atlas.

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