WSJ Blog Digits made a list of the 50 most common passwords from the list recently leaked from Gawker’s database. Most of the passwords are expectedly simple to guess including the top 3 (“123456”, “password” and “12345678”). Some are related to one of Gawker Media websites like “lifehack” and “gizmodo” and some are popular keywords like “starwars” and “nintendo” . But some passwords are downright surprising. The ones I found most unexpected were – “monkey”, “0”, “michelle” and “pepper”. I’m sure people have their logic behind it though. Or maybe I just didn’t know that monkeys were so popular and Michelle was such a popular name (Jennifer, I understand).
Here is the list of Top 50 passwords. The good folks at WSJ have highlighted the ones that belong to Gawker Media websites.
WSJ has some other interesting stats and charts based on the correlation between email providers and passwords. Go ahead and read them.
One thing I fail to understand is that, while people are making a hue and cry about the fact that even smart readers of such publications keep simple to guess passwords, they forget the simple fact that most people don’t care about these accounts being hacked. I am sure most of them use much secure passwords for the important services like their emails and bank accounts. So the Gawker Media passwords don’t really provide a fair picture of people’s awareness of the password security essentials.
[Thanks WSJ Digits]
