If you are on the internet, you must be aware of the word Hacking. Are you? There must be many online accounts of yours for which you have chosen a strong password. Isn’t it? Did you select a secure password, really? Or is it really easy to guess?
Hacking is something that can happen to any account, any site anytime. But to save yourself from this, what you can do is to improve your password security. But you must be thinking, how?
So here, we are sharing the best tips to improve your password security. But before that, let us see what are the top 25 worst passwords ever that you must not use. So let us take a look.
List of Top 25 Worst Passwords of 2021:
Check out the list of the 25 worst passwords used by many internet users. This data is collected by NordPass. NordPass conducted the most breached passwords research in 2021.
Rank | Password | Count |
---|---|---|
1 | 123456 | 103,170,552 |
2 | 123456789 | 46,027,530 |
3 | 12345 | 32,955,431 |
4 | qwerty | 22,317,280 |
5 | password | 20,958,297 |
6 | 12345678 | 14,745,771 |
7 | 111111 | 13,354,149 |
8 | 123123 | 10,244,398 |
9 | 1234567890 | 9,646,621 |
10 | 1234567 | 9,396,813 |
11 | qwerty123 | 8,933,334 |
12 | 000000 | 8,377,094 |
13 | 1q2w3e | 8,204,700 |
14 | aa12345678 | 8,098,805 |
15 | abc123 | 7,184,645 |
16 | password1 | 5,771,586 |
17 | 1234 | 5,544,971 |
18 | qwertyuiop | 5,197,596 |
19 | 123321 | 5,168,171 |
20 | password123 | 4,681,010 |
21 | 1q2w3e4r5t | 4,624,323 |
22 | iloveyou | 4,387,925 |
23 | 654321 | 4,384,762 |
24 | 666666 | 4,329,996 |
25 | 987654321 | 4,239,959 |
Tips to Better Password Security
Here are some best actions you can take to improve the security of your passwords: The longer the password, the better.
1. Make a very strong password
Starting with the most simple yet powerful advice, you must keep your password strong. These hackers will try many methods to hack your account, and one of the most common and dangerous methods is to targeting you personally and then manually typing the letters, numbers, and symbols for guessing your password.
Talking about another method, they also can try the brute force attack to hack your password.
In this particular method, they will make the computer run through each and every possible combination of numbers, letters and symbols to crack the password. And they will try it as many times as they could.
Hence, if you want to save your password from these techniques, then make sure that your password is long and complex. However, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be hacked, but if your password is strong enough, it will take long for this entire process.
RELATED: 10 Tips to Stay Completely Anonymous Online
2. Do not reuse passwords on every site
The worst mistake you can make is to keep the password of all your accounts the same. No matter how tough you think your password is, you must not use it everywhere.
The reason is that when the hackers make a large scale hack with some email servers, the list of email addresses and passwords will be leaked and if you are using the same account combination of email address in the password on others account as well, the chances are very high that those other accounts will also get hacked on the basis of the information they have from the email server.
If you don’t want that to happen, then the best thing is to use different passwords for a different account. Especially if that account matters to you, you must keep it different from others.
It is also very important to use new passwords every time you change your password. If you don’t do that, the chances of getting your hack will be very high.
3. Strictly no use of personal information
The worst mistake you can make is to make your password easy to guess. Having said that, if you are using your password, which has any of your personal information such as your name, last name, birth date, address, anniversary, pet name, or any such name, then your password is very easy to guess.
Strictly make sure that you do not use them at all in any of your passwords. Also, apart from this, if you have to choose any security question, then please do not choose the one that is very obvious to guess.
4. Keep characters varied
For keeping a good password, you must make it long. However, making it long isn’t the only thing that can help here.
You also should use different characters in your password to make it secure. Make sure that whatever password you are keeping should not make sense. It does not have to grammatically correct. The more weird spelling it has, the more you are safe.
To keep it easy, let’s understand it with an example. A password like rat, season, miniature are easy passwords, whereas words like xhiemofd, gthesoan, and jffoenfg are good passwords.
If you keep a password like Xhiemofd@1, then it will be a very strong password since the word does not make sense, you have used different characters and one capital letter as well.
5. Never keep it in an order
Most people keep their password simple like 1234, abcde, qwerty, and so on. Do not ever keep it in order because these are the most common passwords ever, and a hacker will not take more than 10 minutes to guess it.
So no matter even if it is a shopping site, do not keep it in an ascending or descending order.
6. Use a password manager
Have you ever heard about the password manager? If you are not aware of Google Password Manager, then it is a service that can auto-generate and store strong passwords for you. You can only access these passwords since you need to use a master password for accessing the file.
Yes, you need to remember the master password, but if you do that, you are going to play SAFE. There are many such service tools available for free and paid both. You can choose the one as per your convenience.
7. Keep changing your password
Always keep changing your password, especially if it is an internet banking password, or is related to something significant. Try not to keep the same password for very long.
Keep changing your password every six months or so. Once you change the password, please make sure that you do not repeat the same you have saved for a long time.
8. Do not link your other accounts
Whenever you visit any site such as a shopping site or such, you will find an option to log in via Google or Facebook. Most people prefer to sign up with either Google or Facebook instead of making a new account since it is easy, manageable, and time-saving.
However, we do not recommend you to do this. You must not do this. It is because if your Google or Facebook account gets hacked, then all your linked accounts will also get hacked.
So do make sure that you always use a new password and keep it separate from your social media accounts.
9. Always Log out
Whenever you are logging in into some account, then make sure that you log out once you are done with it.
Especially if it is a banking site, never forget logging out because if you don’t log out once you are done, you will be logged in for some time, and the chances of any fraudulent activity will get increased.
If you are using it in a cafe or on a laptop that is used by everyone, then it is mandatory to log out every time you leave the PC.
10. Do not share it with anyone
Okay, this may sound the most generic tip, but trust me, it is important. You might not share your social media or internet banking account password to anyone, but when it comes to streaming apps and other such apps password, you may share it with your friend. However, do not do that. It is not safe.
Especially if you are sharing it over any messenger app, then it is not safe. Although the chats are encrypted, it still can be hacked, and your information can be misused. So do not share it.
Some people like writing their passwords on a sheet or a paper to note it. If you are also doing it, stop doing it as it can easily be misused.