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‘123456’ Is 2018’s Worst Password, Study Says. But This Year, ‘donald’ Joined the List

Fortune: “Donald” has joined a new list. Not of world leaders, but of “worst passwords.” The password-management firm SplashData released its annual list of the 100 worst character combinations it found among leaks of about five million passwords. “Donald” entered the list at position 23. You’ll also find “qwerty” (#9), password (#2), and baseball (#32). The worst of the worst passwords? “123456,” which has been sitting on top of the worst password chart for five years running. Bad passwords are short, easily guessed, often contain words or common abbreviations, and are used by many other people. If one of yours is on the list, the right time to change it is right now.

What’s a strong password? It’s uniquely created for each site, it’s relatively long, and it’s not a common phrase or sequence. Many experts now recommend a password made up of a few words that are picked at random, a technique popularized by Diceware. While this may seem counter-intuive—couldn’t automated software just try all those words?—the large number of combinations and the length of the password in total makes it as hard to break as a shorter, impossible-to-type or remember sequence…”

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