We all deal with passwords in our digital lives.

Some people have so many its hard to keep track of them.

But I found a list of the most recent “worst” passwords that truly blew my mind.

How people could believe themselves to be digitally protected using any of the passwords this list seems just….unreal!

How about:

1. password

2. 123456

3. 12345678

4. qwerty

5. abc123

OY! ‘Password’ as a password?! Really?!

And there are about 20 more of these doozies on the list. Yikes.

A few years ago I met Christopher S. Penn at a Podcamp and I follow his blog because he writes smart stuff sometimes (which is about 100 times more than I write smart stuff).

His article about passwords I thought had some really smart ideas including:

“Change your passwords now, and change them in such a way that no one password works for everything. At a bare minimum, add a word for password groups so that password sets can be remembered but are different from major network to network.
For example, if the password you want to use is CheeseBurgers!, then create CheeseBurgers!Banking as a password for financial services, CheeseBurgers!Social for networks like Facebook and Twitter, CheeseBurgers!Email for mail services, etc. You’ll still mentally have “one” password but it won’t work for everything. (the added length is also a minor increase to security since longer passwords are harder to guess) If another Gawker media incident happens where millions of passwords and email addresses are stolen, perhaps only your CheeseBurgers!Blogging password will need to be changed.”

How you handle your passwords is your business but it’s important that you NOT take them for granted. The harder you make them, the easier it will be to protect your stuff.

I hope all this helps.

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