Just a few days back, the news of the partial hacking of the Twitter handle of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was doing the rounds in the newsrooms. The news of hacking of websites of various institutions is also very common. All of them have one thing in common, that is the theft of their passwords or PIN or secret code word. And this theft is done by very sharp minded software experts sitting in the country or far away abroad, who are called hackers. Hackers are good as well as bad. When someone hacks your account without any fault of yours, then be sure that he is a bad or dangerous hacker. Be it digital transaction or email address, WiFi connection, debit card or credit card PIN, all these functions require a secret code word, which is generally termed as password or PIN (personal identification number). Password is a kind of secret key, which opens the lock of your digital account and also the lock of your bank account or credit card. Smartphone screens also have some kind of passwords, without which you cannot operate a phone.
There are very few people who take precautions while creating passwords. Most people usually create passwords that even a child can guess easily. Hackers are very smart and technically capable people. Yet people in different countries use a lot of very common passwords. Earlier it was thought that the most popular password in India is ‘123456’, but a recent report has revealed that it is not so, but the most popular password is ‘password’. The interesting thing is that in Japan also the same top password is used as in our country. According to a recent research by NordPass, a password management organisation, the other common passwords people use in India are ‘Krishna’, ‘Sairam’, ‘iloveu’, and ‘Omsairam’, among few others. In India, passwords with predictable numbers and based on the keyboard are especially popular.
Often when you get a fibre connection in your home, the technical team will usually assign a simple password on your WiFi connection like 12345 so that you can remember it easily. However, you can change it later. Different variations of the keyboard of a computer or mobile phone were also ranked high in the lists of passwords research. All over the world, such combinations are quite popular. Names and loving words were found to be popular in India. Similarly, 123456789, 12345678, india123, abc123, indya123, 123123, abcd1234 etc are some other common passwords. Similar trends have been seen in many countries in the list of Indian passwords. India is one of the few countries to have a different number one password – ‘password’, while 43 of the 50 countries included in the research have got the number one password ‘123456’. The names are very popular among both men and women. Passwords with names are often like ‘Priyanka’, ‘Sanjay’, ‘Rakesh’. English loving words are also quite common, especially among women, such as “ilovu”, “Sweetheart”, “Lovely”, “Sunshine”, etc. Use a number and a unique letter at the beginning, end, or centre of your password to make it stronger and unique. Passwords can be difficult to remember, so note them down in your diary.
Use strong passwords to keep your accounts safe
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