Then if you haven’t been hacked you are massively lucky and should buy a lotto ticket today. Hackers use password cracking software that tries various passwords until it succeeds. Naturally, they try the most common ones first.
Most common passwords
- 123456
- password
- 12345678
- qwerty
- 12345
- 123456789
- football
- 1234
- 1234567
- baseball
I understand the problem. Naturally, you want something you can easily remember. A far safer method is to use the first letters of a memorable phrase. Instead of ‘football’, how about I Watch 2 Football Games A Day On Sunday – iw2fgados. Using the numeral 2 complies with some sites’ insistence on using at least one number. If a site require a special character, you could start or end with ! If you need four numbers, only, use the phone keypad to determine the number that corresponds to the first four words of your memorable phrase.
Another example: I Love 2 Take Long Walks 4 Health = Il2tlw4h
Each person will have their own ideas about a memorable phrase.
I also use a different phrase for financial sites, like online banking, than I do for ordinary sites, and yet a different one for social media. Facebook is a target of hackers, your password there should never be the same as your password for financial sites.
Marie Brack is the author of Frugal Living for the 21st Century: Adventures in Using Your Money Wisely. It’s available on Amazon.com in both Kindle and paperback versions.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=marie+brack