Its 3rd May, Greetings to all readers on World Password Day. In this article, I am going to help you analyse the strength of your current password and how to set a strong password to remain safe. Passwords play an important in our digital world. We need passwords to unlock our computer and mobile phones, log into our social media accounts, financial transactions and to execute those tasks where security is the topmost priority. But, did you know that 90% of these passwords are used can easily be hacked? Yes, these passwords are so common that they can be guessed very easily.

Every year, SplashData, password management applications provider release a list of Top 25 passwords for that year. The most interesting that we have found is that ‘123456’ and ‘password’ continues to be users’ favourite for the 4th consecutive year. Both the passwords have ranked 1 and 2 in the Worst Passwords of 2016. Apart from these, users have also used words like monkey, master, starwars, football etc.  The company estimates that about 10% of people have used at least one of the 25 worst passwords for 2017, and nearly 3% of people have used the worst password, 123456.

25 Worst Passwords of 2017

Let’s have a look at the Top 25 Worst Passwords of 2017 :

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345678
4. qwerty
5. 12345
6. 123456789
7. letmein
8. 1234567
9. football
10. iloveyou
11. admin
12. welcome
13. monkey
14. login
15. abc123
16. starwars
17. 123123
18. dragon
19. passw0rd
20. master
21. hello
22. freedom
23. whatever
24. qazwsx
25. trustno1

If you are currently using any of the above 25 passwords then you must change your password right away. Accounts that are protected with such kind of passwords are at the highest risk of being hacked. Hackers can hack into your account and steal your personal data. The company has also released the list of Top 100 worst passwords of the year.

Strong Passwords – Do’s and Don’ts

Hence, you must safeguard your account with strong passwords. SplashData has also shared the following three simple steps to help you to set a strong password:

1.  Use passphrases of twelve characters or more with mixed types of characters including upper and lower cases.
2.  Use a different password for each of your website logins. If a hacker gets your password they will try it to access other sites.
3. Protect your assets and personal identity by using a password manager to organize passwords, generate secure random passwords, and automatically log into websites.

Never share your password with everyone. You can add more strength to your passwords by adding numbers and special characters like – *, $,%,#,@ etc to it. Do Not write down your password. You can take the help of password manager software to keep your password protected.

Don’t forget to change your passwords at regular intervals. Stronger passwords add more protection to your accounts.