Commonly Used Passwords

What are passwords? In the olden days, when a messenger came to a king, in order to identify him and make sure that he is not an impostor, the king would give him a word. In order to enter the castle and hold court with the king, he would have to repeat that word to the castle guards to allow him to 'pass'. I guess this story briefly sums up the history of passwords. It works similarly in the cyber-world. A person who wants to access your email account has to know that special word in order to pass the email account's security. On entering the right word, the website's security allows the person to pass into the email account.

At the outset it seems like a perfectly well laid out plan. But unfortunately there are some people who try to access (computer hacking) your email account and your details. They do this for several reasons. They may send an illegal email from your account, so the national security cannot catch them. They may want to discredit you and send illicit emails to your friends through social networking websites for revenge. Or they may also want to get through your Internet-banking account (phishing) and launder away your hard-earned money from your account to theirs.

Hence, in the light of all these Internet crimes, it is essential that you set a password that another person cannot guess. Your password has to be something that comes from perhaps the deepest, darkest depths of your mind, things you do not generally talk about, so that no one can have an inkling of an idea of what your password could be. After all Internet security is not something to be taken lightly. Unfortunately some people do not give this matter adequate attention and instead set very common passwords to their accounts, and then their accounts get hacked.

Most Frequently Used Passwords

Before I get to the list, there are some common themes followed by most people that needs to be avoided. After all it is a matter of Internet privacy. Most common theme is to give the name of their favorite celebrity as the password. It may be an actress, actor, a story-book/movie character or a sportsman, but for a person who knows you well, it takes only 4 - 5 attempts to guess your password. The other very passwords include the names of the email account holder's boyfriend/girlfriend, spouse or crush. This one too is very easy to guess and it hardly takes 3 attempts for the account hacker to guess the password. Other people keep the names of their kids, pets followed by '123' as their password, which is again very simple to guess. And finally others will follow their loyalties and keep their passwords after their favorite brand, sports club, restaurant or even the name of their homes. So if a person knows you very well, it may take that person only up to 20 attempts to get your password right and access your Internet accounts.

Most Common Passwords

Now the above passwords can be guessed only by those close to you. But there are some most popular passwords which people choose to give to their Internet accounts. Surveys have been conducted by the email account providers to show people their mistakes and to make them more aware of the predictability of their passwords. So here is a list of 10 most common passwords.

1. Password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. blink182
10. (first name)

From this list we can see that the most common password is 'password' itself!

Other Common Passwords

1. 12345678
2. 696969
3. batman
4. baseball
5. michael
6. football
7. jesus
8. christ1

What people need to understand and learn is that a password is a very sensitive commodity and people can access your account and tamper with it. Hence it is very essential not to use these common passwords, but use such a password which cannot be guessed by anyone. Make sure that your password doesn't remotely have anything to do with you, your life or the things which you talk about or that are close to you.

Remember, in these times of net crimes, it is always good to be alert and safe and know about Internet safety. Hence keep changing your password every 6 months so that the probability of guessing your password is reduced.