Is it Time to Change Your Password, Colorado?

I have a lot of passwords, and I’m sure you do too.

We are all over-connected, so to speak. Pretty much every device has to have a password, not to mention all of the websites you connect to on a daily basis. At work, many of our passwords are rolling – you must change the passwords every few months. I don’t know about you, but I find myself needing some sort of book to keep them all straight. I changed my password one time and forgot it within 20 minutes.

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Some people can get away with having only one password, but we’ve all been warned that’s a no-no. I have several friends who use the same password for everything, and wouldn’t you know it, their password is “password”. Of course, many others use a numerical sequence or even their name.

Furthermore, a lot of friends share their passwords with other people. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t share passwords with anyone. That being said, I do ask my girls to share theirs with me now. I’m worried that they will forget a password and then we’ll be locked out of a device. It’s happened several times already, but now I have them all written down so it, hopefully, won’t happen again. I just have to remember where I put the list.

NordPass, a cybersecurity firm examined data from 30 countries about passwords that are easy to guess. According to an article published on Mental Floss, about that study, there seem to be about 50 overused passwords. Some are pretty predictable, like using 123456 as a password. Others might surprise you.

The list includes passwords like password, 123456, and guest. But I found it amusing that the list includes some other random, but overused passwords like "monkey," "reset," and "shadow." Even more surprising is that number 50 on the list is "Nicole." Maybe there are a lot of people named Nicole, who can’t think of any other password to use.

If you’ve used any of these passwords, as the article suggests, it might be time to change it. The article also states that if a password contains words that help you remember, it most likely will help a hacker too.