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Daily News Roundup: Your Passwords Are Probably Trash

Author: Cameron Summerson / Source: How-To Geek

Recently, the UK’s National Cyber Security Center paired up with Have I Been Pwned?’s Troy Hunt to conduct a survey that analyzed passwords of accounts that had been breached. Turns out that most users (still) suck at using strong passwords.

The top passwords found in the study?

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“123456,” followed by “123456789.” Other brilliant things, like “qwerty,” “password,” and “111111” rounded out the top five spots, with “123345678,” “abc123,” and “password1” all finding spots in the top 10. People’s names, band names, and sports teams were also among the most used (and most breached) passwords. Fantastic.

It’s no wonder we hear about new data breaches almost weekly these days—passwords like these do about as much to protect your data as not using one at all. If you find yourself using anything similar to these passwords—or even reusing the same passwords on multiple sites—it’s time to re-think your password strategy.

The good news is that we have your back. Choosing a strong password is actually easy; as is remembering those passwords. How? By using a password manager. It may seem a bit daunting to get started, but we can help with that too.

As an aside, if you’re curious about any of the passwords you currently use, you can cross-reference them with the Have I Been Pwned?’s database—and don’t worry, it’s completely safe. So check your passwords, change the ones that have been part of a breach (or are just generally weak), and get yourself a good password manager to help with it all—lest you find yourself on the wrong end of one of these lists.

In other news, Apple may be bringing some of iOS’ best features to macOS, Netflix is testing its own version of the I’m feeling lucky” button, Google Assistant is coming to third-party accessories, and a lot more.