I read an article today that listed the most popular passwords for 2014. In case you didn’t see it, here’s the list:
123456 password 12345 12345678 qwerty 123456789
1234 baseball football 1234567 monkey letmein
abc123 111111 mustang access shadow master
michael superman 696969 123123 batman trustno1
I have to admit that these are pretty lame, but this whole password thing is getting out of hand. Most Internet sites that insist on a password ( and more and more and more of them do) require that the password contain seven or eight characters, with numbers, special symbols and/or capitalization — and — you’re supposed to have a different password for each site.
(One thing I’ve noticed is that even though these sites all require you to rack your brain to come up with unique passwords, that you usually forget and have to click on that little “forget your password?” box, all the sites ask you the same recovery questions, like where did you go to school, what’s your mother’s maiden name, what was your first car…. seems like they want you to be creative, but don’t impose that restriction on themselves. Just sayin…)
But back to passwords. I understand the Internet is a dangerous place and people want my stuff, and these are bad people that want it and all that. I do get it. That’s the reason I don’t put anything on my computer that I wouldn’t share with anyone — even the bad guys.
I realize that in today’s world, we’re pretty much forced to do some things online — we have to get our bank statements online, for instance. We do take the proper precautions with those passwords, but Facebook (for example) pretty much has the same password restrictions. I rarely use Facebook and have less personal information on it than in the local telephone book (yea, we still get one.) So I really don’t care who sees my page.
I’m much more concerned with someone hacking into our bank’s database than I am of them stealing my password. My opinion is that the whole password system is flawed and messy — you’d think there ought to be a better way if all these web sites are going to force us to protect ourselves.
As far as picking passwords, everyone has their own method — I always thought •••••••• would be a good password, since that’s what I always see when the password is entered. There’s an old blonde joke that during a password audit, the blonde was using the password: “MickeyMineyPlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofyColumbus” — when she was asked why such a long password, she said she was told that it has to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.
I’m kind of the opinion that i should be able to choose/use whatever password I want — I’d be willing to sign some sort of a waiver of liability, but that’s not the way the system operates. It’s pretty incredible that with all the advances in technology, digital security still relies on my mother’s maiden name or the street I grew up on….
Aren’t you glad you don’t need a password to read this blog?
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