Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on December 21, 2010

Troubling information about common computer and Internet account passcodes/passwords — if you’re one of the thousands using any of those cited in the articles below for your website accounts, or anything vaguely similar, change your computer and/or online accounts passcodes pronto.

Throw in some numbers, symbols, and a few upper-cased letters to increase your passcode’s strength. It may not deter a skilled, determined hacker, but it should safety-guard your online accounts and hard drive from the garden-variety hackers, identity thieves, and other nefarious scumbags.

From City-Times, Most Common Password of Website Users Unveiled:

Careless website users beware. A report has been released by the Wall Street Journal regarding the most common passwords from websites related to Gawker Media that hackers have uncovered.

The list is filled by passwords that websites warn people about before they register. Like their reminder of using unique combinations of letters and numbers and avoidance of common phrases and that the password must be at least eight characters.

From among the 188,279 hacked media, celebrity and gossip sites that are owned by Gawker, Lifehacker and Jezebel, here are the top 10 passwords:

12345
password
12345678
lifehack
qwerty
abc123
111111
monkey
consumer
12345

Despite the fact that only those websites from Gawker Media are the ones related, this information is still disturbing. As you can see, the top three passwords are used by hundreds of users.

Hopefully, the websites that have such careless passwords are not highly personal as banking and credit companies’ websites. It is highly probable that users are particular with their security and observe measures on giving very personal information.

From Daily Postal, Most Common Password From Gawker:

Gawker was hacked lately and hackers exposed usernames and passwords from the database. The following are the top 13 most common passwords, according to WSJ’s examination of the 188,279 passwords that were leaked:

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345678
4. lifehack
5. qwerty
6. abc123
7. 111111
8. monkey
9. consumer
10. 12345
11. 0
12. letmein
13. trustno1

Identify theft is a multi-billion-dollar industry… remember these Citibank ads from a few years ago?

While they aren’t about commonly hacked website passcodes, they illustrate the point well about identity theft.

CitiBank Identity Theft Commercial – Jake B., Identity Theft Victim

Citibank Identity Theft Commercial – Darryl P., Identity Theft Victim

Citibank Identity Theft Commercial – Helen D., Identity Theft Victim

Categories: Social and Political Climate, Technology, Videos, Audio Files
Tags: ad, Citibank, commercial, common passcodes, common passwords, computer, data, database, fake ID, fake identification, Gawker, hacker, identification, identity, identity theft, Internet, online, passcode, password, passwords, security, security breech, username, video, website, website passcode, YouTube