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Imagine you leave your front door wide open, and any random person can come inside. Your family life would be snooped day and night with no privacy at all. Sounds like a scene from a horror movie? We don't want to scare you too much, but weak passwords equal just that. Less than a minute - this is the amount of time it takes to crack weak passwords during a brute-force attack.
As a society, we need to admit that we have a problem with weak passwords. Maybe it's a lack of time or the increasing amount of online accounts, or could be both reasons that contribute to us losing the control of our digital safety. Over 500 million passwords were exposed in previous data breaches. If this number is not enough to think about your passwords, maybe the below list and the amount of time these passwords were exposed will do the justice.
What are the top 10 most exposed passwords in 2018
The yearly lists of the most used passwords are quite popular. Mostly, to show that they don't change much. And sadly, weak passwords still find their way to our accounts. Check the below list carefully and pay attention to the times these passwords were exposed. It should be enough to convince you to change your passwords now:
123456 (exposed 23,174,662 times)
123456789 (exposed 7,671,364 times)
qwerty (exposed 3,810,555 times)
password (exposed 3,645,804 times)
111111 (exposed 3,093,220 times)
12345678 (exposed 2,889,079 times)
1234567 (exposed 2,484,157 times)
12345 (exposed 2,333,232 times)
iloveyou (exposed 1,593,388 times)
sunshine (exposed 405,578 times)
If your password is not among the top 10 most exposed passwords? Don’t celebrate too early, make sure you safely check your passwords password strength checker. This database checks your passwords against the ones that were leaked publically.
What can you do for better security?
If you finally got the courage to invest some time in your digital security then follow the below steps to reduce the chance of being exposed:
Use strong and complex passwords. If you need some help generating strong passwords, try our web tool. Our web password generator is safe to use, as we never save any generated passwords in our servers. With our password generator, you can generate random passwords even when your internet connection is turned off. This simple test proofs that we don't save any of the generated passwords to our servers.
Use a password manager and never save passwords in any browsers or your computer. Built-in password managers, such as iCloud Keychain, are also very comfortable. But be aware if you want to migrate from Mac to Windows supported laptop, you will lose your password as there is no way of exporting your passwords. Where all third-party password managers, such as NordPass, provide you easy password data import/export. Even though you change your mind about your provider, you can always move on to the next one.
Enable 2-factor authentication (2FA) where possible. The 2FA is very useful as it adds an additional layer of security. So even your password gets compromised, the hacker won't be able to access your accounts.
An average person has around 90 online accounts. But during this digital age revolution, more and more services are moving online. Meaning that we store more sensitive and private information online. Hackers invest a lot of time in new algorithms and databases, advanced hacking lists reducing the time of brute-force cracking attacks. But we, as a society, need to step up our game and make sure that bad guys work harder for our personal data as now we give it to them too easy.