January 20, 2015

One More New Year’s Resolution: Change Your Passwords Before Groundhog Day

Foley Hoag LLP - Security, Privacy and the Law

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The SplashData list of worst passwords of 2014 was just published, and it looks very similar to the list in 2013, 2012, 2011, etc.:

Rank	Password	Change from 2013
1	123456	No Change
2	password	No Change
3	12345	Up 17
4	12345678	Down 1
5	qwerty	Down 1
6	123456789	No Change
7	1234	Up 9
8	baseball	New
9	dragon	New
10	football	New
11	1234567	Down 4
12	monkey	Up 5
13	letmein	Up 1
14	abc123	Down 9
15	111111	Down 8
16	mustang	New
17	access	New
18	shadow	Unchanged
19	master	New
20	michael	New
21	superman	New
22	696969	New
23	123123	Down 12
24	batman	New
25	trustno1	Down 1

Sadly, I could have written this same post and used nearly the same list in 2010– in fact, I did: http://www.securityprivacyandthelaw.com/2010/01/is-your-password-still-123456-if-so-its-time-for-a-change/. Not everyone can start exercising, lose weight, save more money or get a new job as a resolution for 2015, but you can change your password, usually in less than 60 seconds, and toughen it up a bit.

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DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.