Culture & Entertainment

Do you use the world's worst password?

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Canadian Living
Culture & Entertainment

Do you use the world's worst password?

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You're ready to begin another workday, you start up your computer and you're greeted with a password prompt. A few keystrokes later  -- Yes! You're in. You launch a browser, enter another password to enable your Internet access and -- Yes! You're in again. The dreaded password rejection notice And then you visit Facebook. (Let's not pretend like that's not the first thing you do at the office.) Or Twitter. Or Stumble Upon? You enter your username and password and then you're slammed with rejection. It's the dreaded "incorrect password" message. How rude! forgottenpassword Perhaps it's not Facebook's fault Maybe you changed your password recently. You try something else. Incorrect password. Drat! For a moment, you think it's Facebook's fault. They're locking you out. Gah, Facebook! Eventually, you accept that it's probably you, not them. With a flicker of shame, you accept defeat and click the silent, smirking "Forgot your password?" link. (I'm sure it smirks.) Changing your password You enter your email, apologetically asking Facebook to help you to clear this little password mishap and let you in so you can catch up with what your friends are up to. Addicted. Who you? After receiving an email from Facebook (Yay, Facebook!), it's time to change your password. Whatever you do, don't type the world's worst password! Nope, it's not abc123. That's the 5th worst password. Nope, it's not 123456. That's the 2nd worst password. According to smart phone application developers SplashData, cited in the 25 worst passwords of 2011 article at Mashable, the worst password is simply: password So many passwords, so little memory As the senior web editor of Canadianliving.com and a journalist with more than 10 years of work-related online activities under my belt, I have a collection of about 100 active passwords that grant me access to various servers, software applications and administrative accounts. I'm happy to report that "password" is not one of them. Phew! How about you? Is "password" one of your passwords? Don't be a hacker's dream come true. Change those risky passwords now. And change them often. Create the best password To create a password that's hard to crack, use combinations of letters and numbers, and special characters, if allowed. Favour a long password of eight characters or more. Don't use the same password everywhere and especially take care to use a unique password for banking. According to Microsoft's advice on how to create strong passwords, hackers may gain access to passwords on less secure sites and then use them on more secure places like banking sites. And with all that password-changing, you might need to revisit Mashable for 5 tools for keeping track of your passwords. Care to share? How do you keep track of all your passwords?

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Do you use the world's worst password?

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