Easiest to Guess Passwords Most Popular
Posted on August 11, 2004
Despite being easy for hackers to guess many people use personal names and dates for their Internet and email passwords. A Silicon.com article (citing a Visa Europe study) reports that passwords about pets, birthdays, family members and historical events are the most popular. The study even found that 2% of people have used "password" as their password! The large amount of passwords needed to surf the web today could be part of the reason people choose familiar names and dates for their logins. However, a combination of letters and numbers is a much better choice from a security standpoint.
A lot of people use easy passwords for registrations they don't feel have much information about them, but hackers can use these types of registrations do gain tidbits of information they can apply when trying to break into a user's more important online accounts.
