SplashData’s latest list of the worst passwords of 2014 shows that ‘iloveyou’ has fallen off the roster since 2013, while batman and 696969 made their shameful debut along with superman and dragon among others. The entire lineup consisting of the 25 worst examples of watch words, serves to show how unimaginative people continue to be when it comes to protecting their online accounts in spite of rising cyber crime.
Let’s talk about the new entries on the list apart from dragon, 69696969, batman and superman. The passwords which were seen for the first time in the top 25 included football, baseball, mustang, master, michael, access and trustno1. Meanwhile, most of humanity’s faith clearly rests in numbers seeing as 123456 maintained its crown once again, something it has been doing since 2011.
What’s more, ‘password’ continued to hold the second spot for the fourth year in row. The two other stalwarts who stuck to their seats at 6 and 18 were 123456789 and shadow, respectively. 10 out of the 25 worst keys people were caught using to protect their accounts, were either just numbers or included numerals as well as alphabets. 12345 received the most love, moving up by 17 spots, while 123123 was demoted by 12 places.
Also see: Microsoft’s Telepathwords reads your mind, guesses your password. You can try it now
Also visible in the lineup are letmein, monkey, abc123 and qwerty. Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University were both seen collaborating over this Telepathwords online tool that lets you type in your password and check how secure it is. Maybe you’d want to give it a try if your security key features in the worst ones of 2014?
SplashData’s reckoning of the worst passwords of 2014 are based on over 3.3 million watch words which were leaked during the past year.