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?
Theycallmejane's Blog 
Those are funny…are those “great minds that think alike” or the noncreative people?!
Um…. let me go change my password! 😉
I actually kind of love #17 (monkey). It tickles me to think that so many people go to the word monkey for their passwords. We really are all a bunch of nutballs aren’t we?
Mine aren’t up there, but Husband did threaten to divorce me if I didn’t change our ATM password from our anniversary date.
Dumb, I know. Luckily, I never learned the hard way just how dumb it was.
Nah. Mine is f***YOU. 🙂
F-you is #49. I KNEW I shoulda done the Top 50! 😉
Awesome! LOL
I knew it!!!
I’m proud to say that no one would guess my passwords in a million years. The trouble is that there are so many and they are so varied that I have to write them down, which kind of defeats the object!
There is no way I can remember different passwords for every site and it irks me that they’re case sensitive. (Yes, I know that CONSISTENCY could solve that on my part.) The ones that require some numbers or symbols make it even harder.
Oddly enough though, I can key in my 14-digit library card # without any problem.
Mine is not up there. Phew. But I say ‘mine’ in the singular, because if I can possibly help it, I use the same password EVERYWHERE. Otherwise, how will I remember? So if someone cracks it (which wouldn’t be hard), they’d have access to just about every corner of my life in a second flat.
OOOPS! Yep, saw one I use. You just have to guess which one it is!
No, mine isn’t there, but one of my husband’s is. Mine is pretty much unguessable, but I also use it or a small variation of it for pretty much everything — otherwise I might as well not have any passwords because i wouldn’t be getting into ANYTHING.
I guess it’s a little sad that so much of our lives have to be password-protected. By the word monkey.
Ha! What a funny list. I’m glad none of my passwords are on there. 🙂
Mine is really difficult, especially to remember…..and I finally changed almost all my sites to the same one…except work…they make me change it every 3 months. 3 MONTHS!….and you can’t use the last 10 previous…10!!! ridiculous.
yeah, I F. a lot sometimes. sorry about that:)
Mine’s not up there. I have a number one. Then I had this great password no one would get in a million years, but it was easy to remember. Then they won’t let me use it because it’s too short.
We lived in a gated community that the code was GATE. Smart, huh? Though once when it was a real pain in the butt and wouldn’t open, I pushed the buttons slowly, spelling out loud f-. The friends I had with me said, “wow, is that really the code?”
Not THAT’S funny!
Good list.
No mine isn’t there. I’d never use numbers as I’d never remember it.
Mine isn’t up there! And I hate it when I have to do a number letter combo. I have a horrible memory. Raging hormones don’t help with the memory!
Whew…I guess I am smart! : )
Mine is not there. Actually, NONE of mine are there. I have a series of them and can go through them but sometimes forget which one I used where.
What I hate is the bank/credit union that requires letter, number and special character combination but I finally found one I could remember.
Those are funny. I don’t use any of those but my kids always try to use 1234. At least they aren’t using #5 or #20.
I know you were thinking of me, at least for one moment. My ears were so itchy the whole day! LOL. I didn’t use any of the above (and if I did, I could’t tell ya!) BUT I did use some curse words in a long combination on my Blackberry. Problem came one day when I needed my son to unlock the phone to call my husb when I was driving. Yeah…
The combination of poor passwords and automated attacks means that in just 110 attempts, a hacker will typically gain access to one new account on every second or a mere 17 minutes to break into 1000 accounts.
50% of users rely on slang words, dictionary words, or common arrangements of numbers and letters, like “qwerty,” for their passwords.
Among users of RockYou, the most common password was “123456.”