We Are All Dumber Because of the 25 Worst Passwords of 2014; May God Have Mercy on Our Souls

Please, for the love of whatever you hold dear, stop using these passwords.

Every year, SplashData, maker of Password management apps,  releases the worst (read: most common) passwords found in cracked password documents. Unsurprisingly, they all continue to be mind-numbingly stupid. If you are using any of these passwords, please change it to a random assortment of words right now.

Here’s the 2014 list, annotated for what has changed positions since last year (via Gizmodo):

1. 123456 (Unchanged)

2. password (Unchanged)

3. 12345 (Up 17)

4. 12345678 (Down 1)

5. qwerty (Down 1)

6. 123456789 (Unchanged)

7. 1234 (Up 9)

8. baseball (New)

9. dragon (New)

10. football (New)

11. 1234567 (Down 4)

12. monkey (Up 5)

13. letmein (Up 1)

14. abc123 (Down 9)

15. 111111 (Down 8)

16.mustang (New)

17. access (New)

18. shadow (Unchanged)

19. master (New)

20. michael (New)

21. superman (New)

22. 696969 (New)

23. 123123 (Down 12)

24. batman (New)

25. trustno1 (Down 1)

I hope you’re all proud of yourselves.

Password: 123456.

Really? Batman and Superman? Always be yourself—unless you can be Batman; then always be Batman. Or unless you’re a password; then NEVER BE A SINGLE COMMON WORD.

If you are using one of these passwords and don’t quite know what to do about it, I’d probably link you to this very helpful XKCD comic, but I’m not sure I could withstand seeing “correcthorsebatterystaple” suddenly show up on the list next year.

(via Gizmodo)

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?