Intro
You need a password for everything – from your bank to your email, your electric car to your food delivery. Passwords are everywhere, and they’re not so easy to remember.
In fact, it’s estimated we each have around 100 passwords to remember, which is a lot when you think about how often you probably use them. That’s why lots of people tend to repeat passwords or choose ones that are easy to remember or take a good guess at.
The thing is, passwords that are easy for you to guess tend to be easy for a hack to guess, too. How do we reconcile the need to know hundreds of passwords while not actually making using your phone or computer a living nightmare? We’re going to look at:
- The easiest hackable passwords in the world
- Types of passwords that hackers are going to guess
- How you can prevent your passwords from getting hacked
What are the most hacked passwords in the world?
When a hacker wants to try and get into your emails, your banking, or your online shopping accounts, they’re going to try the easy passwords first. There are quite a few very common passwords that people use, and they’re the ones fraudsters will try first before getting too smart.
We’ve dived into a range of sources and found some common patterns. Here are the top ten passwords that a hacker will probably try when they want to steal your data:
1. Consecutive numbers
2. Password
3. abc123
4. qwerty
5. iloveyou
6. dragon
7. sunshine
8. monkey
9. superman
10. 1qaz2wsx
What are the obvious choices for passwords that hackers can guess?
As well as standard words and numbers, there are questions that people tend to ask themselves when picking a password. This type of password can be relatively hard to guess, but with data mining, someone could have a good try to find out your security choice. These are some password types that you should aim to avoid:
1. Pets name
2. School name
3. Sports team
4. Favorite sport
5. Mother’s maiden name
6. Favorite color
7. Child’s name
8. Partner’s name
9. Favorite films
10. Religious words
Improve your online security systems to prevent hacks
If you’ve seen some of your passwords as some of the most hackable, you’re probably pretty concerned right now. You should work through changing your passwords for the most sensitive accounts, like your banking and email. Then, consider following these tips:
- Use a password manager like LastPass Dashlane so your securely harder-to-guess passwords
- Use a VPN such as Surfshark to encrypt the data that you send and receive from your devices
- Keep your phone and computer software up to date, so security patches are downloaded
- Be skeptical of anyone asking for your details and passwords – your bank won’t ask you to click a link to change your security When you choose a secure password that’s not easily hackable and protect your computer and phone with other security measures, you should reduce the chances of being hacked.