Stuart Brown’s recent interesting blog post on passwords revealed the top ten most commonly used passwords. Not revealing which, one of the passwords from the list is often a launch password we provide clients with so that they can initially remember the password when they first start using back end or extranet functionality. It is always provided with a recommendation to change asap and we even follow up with a reminder if we check and they are still using the ‘guessable’ word!

The list was:
10. Thomas (0.99%)
9. Arsenal (1.11%)
8. Monkey (1.33%)
7. Charlie (1.39%)
6. qwerty (1.41%)
5. 123456 (1.63%)
4. letmein (1.79%)
3. Liverpool (1.82%)
2. password (3.78%)
1. 1234 (3.784%)

The number of passwords we have to remember to get by in our daily lives just grows and grows; house alarm, log in, pin number for debit cards, pin number for credit cards, gym locker etc.

More often than not we are forced to select a combination of letters and numerals potentially making the password harder to remember.

I wonder how many people just use the same password and a variation for everything?! Here is a hopefully a userful link to Winguides’ online password generator for next time you need an ‘unbreakable’ original password.