Please don't use these passwords. Sincerely, the Internet

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Think you're protected from data breach fallout with your strong passwords? When hackers commandeer computers to create botnets, the damage they cause affects plenty of other users. And their ticket in is often stupid-simple: terrible passwords. SplashData has just released its annual list of the worst of them, and things have changed depressingly little over last year. The most commonly hacked password is still "123456," which edged out a past champion of apathy, "password." Other top picks in the an alphanumeric hall of shame are "12345678," "qwerty," "monkey" and new this year, "batman." According to security expert Mark Burnett, the top 25 passwords (below) represent an eye-popping 2.2 percent of passwords exposed.

The good news is that fewer people are using bad passwords than in 2013, perhaps thanks to some well-publicized data breaches at Sony, Target and elsewhere. SplashData reminds folks to create passwords with eight, mixed characters not based on easy-to-brute-force dictionary words -- even with substitutions like "dr@mat1c." As pointed out by Buffer Open , other methods include pass phrases, mnemonic devices and other memory tricks -- including a gem from XKCD. Since you shouldn't use the same password on more than one site, it's also a good idea to use one of the many password managers out there, like LastPass or SplashID. Those let you access your entire collection of passwords with just a single passphrase -- one that had better be a lot stronger than "123456."

Rank	Password	Change from 2013
1	123456	Unchanged
2	password	Unchanged
3	12345	Up 17
4	12345678	Down 1
5	qwerty	Down 1
6	123456789	Unchanged
7	1234	Up 9
8	baseball	New
9	dragon	New
10	football	New
11	1234567	Down 4
12	monkey	Up 5
13	letmein	Up 1
14	abc123	Down 9
15	111111	Down 8
16	mustang	New
17	access	New
18	shadow	Unchanged
19	master	New
20	michael	New
21	superman	New
22	696969	New
23	123123	Down 12
24	batman	New
25	trustno1	Down 1

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