If your password to everything is your pet’s name followed by your birthday, it’s a miracle you haven’t been scammed out of every cent.
A new study looked at the most common password mistakes. And two-thirds of us still make at least one of these.
1. Simple number or letter patterns. 26% of us use easy-to-predict patterns in our passwords, like “ABC” or “123. (Even “do-re-mi” would be more secure.)
2. Birth year or birthdate. 22%
3. Pet names. 20%
4. Family member names. 20%
5. Common words or phrases. 17%.
The rest of the list includes: Places you’ve lived . . . your favorite sports team or athlete . . . the current year . . . and 6% of us have a password with the WORD “password” in it.
20% still use the same password for most or all of their accounts, and another 32% said with slight variations. So that’s half of us. 16% . . . or one in six . . . claim they use a unique password for every single site.
Our top reason for not changing passwords more often is . . . we know we’ll forget them.
National Change Your Password Day is coming up on February 1st, so that’s a good time to do it.