ByDavey Winder,
Senior Contributor.
Amazon account hackers want them, Netflix and PayPal account hackers want them, and yet we still don’t take them seriously enough as multiple lists of compromised passwords prove. This latest database of password insecurity has highlighted just how bad the situation is, country by country, and these are the worst 20 American passwords.
My job, as a cybersecurity evangelist, is something I have taken very seriously for the best part of 40 years now. Yet, given the amount of published words I have written that offer advice on the best way to create, manage and use passwords securely, I can only
conclude I have failed to meet my own expectations. It really isn’t rocket science, after all: make your passwords random in nature, complex in construction and unique in use. That’s the best practice triumvirate that everyone should be applying by now, but, sadly, is not. How do I know? Because, aside from the number of password-related hack attacks that I see evidence of, lists of the most commonly used, and therefore the most insecure, passwords keep getting published. The latest, searchable by country, proves my point in spectacular style. If you want to see just how badly these American passwords suck, think of elephants through a straw, buckle up, because here we go.
