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Account management: Avoid commonly used passwords

By J. Carlton Collins, CPA

Please note: This item is from our archives and was published in 2019. It is provided for historical reference. The content may be out of date and links may no longer function.

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Some CPAs consider themselves clever for coming up with easy-to-remember passwords, but hackers are often wise to this tactic. Each year, SplashData (the developer of SplashID) compiles a list of millions of stolen passwords and sorts them in order of popularity. For 2017, the top 10 most commonly used stolen passwords were as follows:

  1. 12346
  2. password
  3. 12345678
  4. qwerty
  5. 12345
  6. 123456789
  7. letmein
  8. 1234567
  9. football
  10. iloveyou

You can view a complete list of SplashData’s 100 most commonly used stolen passwords at s13639.pcdn.co. For advice on how to generate passwords, refer to my April/May 2015 JofA Technology Q&A item “Unforgettable Passwords.”

About the author

J. Carlton Collins, CPA, (carlton@asaresearch.com) is a technology consultant, a conference presenter, and a JofA contributing editor.

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