The first Thursday in May is World Password Day, an annual reminder to change your passwords. Is this really worth a special day of the year? After all, what could go wrong by using 12345 for a password? As it turns out, it is important. Hackers work hard at cracking codes. If any of your passwords becomes compromised, the consequences you face could be serious. Learn more below.
I Was Hacked! How Bad Could it Be?
If your password is discovered, your bank account information and even the money in your bank could be stolen. Valuable data you could lose includes emails and all your tunes. And it gets worse. If someone breaks into your computer and uses it for nefarious reasons, you could find yourself in legal trouble!
A password proves that you are an authorized person to use a device. Sometimes a management-level password is hacked, providing a greater level of control, even making it possible for software to be modified.
Top Two Biggest Data Breaches
The following are a few details about two of the worst data breaches ever.
1-Yahoo
There was an impact on more than 3 billion user accounts when Yahoo was hacked in 2013 and 2014. Yahoo was one of the giants of the Internet back then. While in negotiations to be purchased by Verizon, Yahoo announced that the following data of 500 million users was compromised:
- Real names
- Email addresses
- Birthdates
- Telephone numbers
Just three months later, in December 2013, 3 billion user accounts were compromised, though that actual number wasn’t provided by Yahoo until October of 2017. In addition to the above-named data, security questions and answers were compromised.
According to Yahoo, the robust bcrypt algorithm, whatever that is, was used to hack the system.
2-Marriott International
In 2014-2018, it was announced by Marriott International that cyber thieves stole data and half a billion customers were affected. Only name and contact info was compromised for some victims. For about 100 million customers, however, Marriott announced that credit card numbers and cards’ expiration dates were stolen from their database.
The Marriott hack was attributed to a Chinese intelligence group spying on citizens of the United States.
Top 10 Worst Passwords
Some passwords are easy to hack. That’s why instructions are given to guide users into creating stronger passwords. The following are among the weakest passwords of them all, according to several sources:
- 123456
- Password
- 123456789
- 12345678
- 12345 (See a pattern here?)
- 111111
- 1234567
- sunshine
- qwerty
- baseball
Tips to Observe World Password Day
Protect your online accounts with strong passwords and avoid all sorts of headaches, in the spirit of World Password Day. The following are three ways to observe this special day devoted to passwords.
- Take a pledge to learn about stronger authentication of your accounts.
- Host a party and let your friends know that you care too much not to discourage the use of lame passwords. Bring in an engaging speaker to teach all about multi-factor authentication, and you can learn as a group. Cocktails are optional.
- Share the news with friends that it’s World Password Day. Consider sharing guidelines for creating a strong password. Whether they know it or not, your friends could have you to thank for avoiding a disaster.
Happy World Password Day!
Have you ever considered the importance of a strong password? Perhaps you never thought a foreign entity or anyone else might be interested in your personal data? You never know! You could be hacked as part of a group on a certain site. What’s the lame password you’re going to replace on World Password Day, May 2, 2019?
