If you haven't given your email or social media passwords a refresh in a while then it's worth making some urgent changes. Today is World Password Day and to mark the occasion the UK's most common phrases have been exposed to show people if their security isn’t up to scratch. Incredibly, it appears that plenty of us are still using ludicrously simple codes including the word 'password' and number '123456'. That makes things ludicrously easy for cyber thieves to crack and possibly access personal data.
With World Password Day aimed at highlighting issues, the team at NordPass say they have studied what passwords UK web users are inputting every day and have come up with the top 20 list of the most popular combinations.
If your password is on the list below, you should change it immediately.
1 - password
2 - 123456
3 -guest
4 -liverpool
5- qwerty
6 -arsenal
7 -123456789
8 - password1
9 - 12345
10 - 12345678
11 - chelsea
12 - charlie
12 - abc123
14 - liverpool1
15 - Parola12
16 - football
17 - monkey
18 - chocolate
19 - yuantuo2012
20 - letmein
"Throughout the years, we observe almost identical password management mistakes, which suggests people simply prefer convenience," said Tomas Smalakys, the chief technology officer of NordPass. "If we cannot do better with passwords, we should do better than passwords. Last year marks a huge milestone in search of alternative online authentication solutions, with passkey technology paving a way to replace passwords in the future."
So what should you do if your password is too simple and you are concerned that your accounts could be at risk? The advice remains clear with most experts advising users to make sure they regularly change their passwords and use a combination that's difficult to guess.
As NordPass confirms, a complex password is one that contains at least 12 characters and a varied combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.
If that sounds too complicated most tech firms such as Apple and Google will generate codes for you which will be saved be securely saved. Using this kind of password generator is the easiest and quickest way to create complex passwords.
Tips to secure your passwords
Even though companies implement security measures to protect our accounts, every user still needs to be careful with their passwords. Below are a few essential tips to improve your password "hygiene":
• Be aware of all accounts that are in your possession. Experts recommend deleting unused accounts and knowing the exact number of those that are active. This way, you can prevent gaps in your password management.
• Make long, unique passwords, and never reuse them. Complicated combinations of numbers, uppercase, lowercase letters, and symbols make the most robust passwords. Reusing them is never an option — if one account gets hacked, other accounts are at risk.
• Use a password manager. This technological solution fully encrypts the passwords stored in the vault and allows secure sharing. Many cybersecurity incidents happen because of simple human mistakes — people leave their passwords openly accessible for others and store them in Excel or other unencrypted applications.
