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The 25 Most Popular Passwords of 2011

By November 22, 2011news

Here’s a pro tip: If your password is “password,” it’s probably time to change it.

SplashData, a company that offers a “complete password management and security solution,” culled from data stolen and posted online by hackers some of the most awesomely bad (and yet commonly used) passwords of all time. And while the research is for 2011, this isn’t the first such list–if you’ve seen one of these before, you’ll probably notice several culprits reappearing from years past.

The 25 most popular passwords in SplashData’s 2011 list:

password

123456

12345678

qwerty

abc123

monkey

1234567

letmein

trustno1

dragon

baseball

111111

iloveyou

master

sunshine

ashley

bailey

passw0rd

shadow

123123

654321

superman

qazwsx

michael

Football

Let’s go over what makes a good password again: You’ll want to include different types of characters, numbers and special characters in conjunction with each other. The longer your magic passphrase is, the better. Separate words with spaces if possible (underscores work, too). And while this ought to be a no-brainer, don’t use the same password for everything.

Last but not least? Your dog’s name’s a definite no-no…unless, of course, it happens to be Mr8@Mxyzptlk76%5.