My son was playing with an old relic from my husband’s childhood. The Playskool castle. He said, “All the people are in the dungeon. And guess what? The girl in the dungeon? She figured out the code to get out. You see, the knight (he’s holding the knight in his hand showing him to me) he made up the code. And the girl figured it out. It was 1-2-3. What a dumb code! Who couldn’t figure that out?!”
Even my 5-year-old son knows that’s a stupid code.
But apparently, many of us use some of the worst passwords for our computer, our atm card, iphones. Here are the top 21 worst passwords according to TVNZ:
1) 123456
2) password
3) 12345678
4) 1234
5) pussy
6) 12345
7) dragon
8) qwerty
9) 696969
10) mustang
11) letmein
12) baseball
13) master
14) michael
15) football
16) shadow
17) monkey
18) abc123
19) pass
20) f***me
21) 6969
I was going to stop at the top 10. But then I saw #11, letmein. Letmein? I actually snorted a little on that one.
So I was going to stop at the top 11 but then I saw number 20. Number 20 reminded me a little of some of my bloggy friends out there (you know who you are!) and I started to wonder…with how often I see that phrase on your blogs I wondered if any of you use it as a password?
But I couldn’t stop at 20 once I saw #21 (totally missing #9 for some reason). 6969. Ahhhh, it takes me back to my teaching days. I taught both high school math and english (I know. I’m one of those strange anomalies – neither right-brained nor left-brained. What can I say?). Especially in math class. If I said, “Turn to page 69.” Snickers. Or, “Do problems 1 – 69 odd.” Giggles. And then there was always, “George, what is the answer to 18?” Well. If the answer was 69? He could barely get a word out, turning red, holding back a laugh, the rest of the class cracking up with one person completely oblivious saying, “What’s so funny? Why is 71 funny?”
So? Did you see YOUR password up there?