Firm reveals list of ‘worst’ sports passwords

by Elise Viebeck - 03/28/15 6:53 PM ET

So much for “Jordan23.”

A password management service is urging sports fans not to use their team, league or favorite player as a password because those codes can be easily cracked.

SplashData, a California-based company, released a list of the “Worst Sports Passwords” as part of its annual effort to encourage customers to adopt savvier logins.

{mosads}After analyzing 3.3 million passwords, the firm found that “baseball” was the most-used sports password, followed by “football,” “hockey” and “jordan.” The team most used for passwords is the New York Yankees (“yankees”).

Overall, the most common passwords remained “123456” and “password,” which have held the top two spots since the list debuted in 2011.

Password security is a serious issue given hackers’ rising sophistication online. Even the White House is investing resources in trying to find alternatives.

Most users are not embracing best practices, such as combining multiple character sets in one password and avoiding common words, surveys have found.

Web service providers are contributing to the problem somewhat by failing to prompt users to create the strongest passwords possible, researchers argue.

A forthcoming study by Canadian security experts revealed there is no consistent standard for a strong password across major web companies such as Google and Yahoo.

SplashData, which provides a line of password management applications, urged Web surfers to avoid widely used words like “soccer” and “nascar” as passwords.

“Being a super fan of any team or athlete doesn’t mean you should put your identity at risk with easily guessable passwords,” said Morgan Slain, the company’s CEO, according to Kron4 News.

“It’s okay to use your favorite team as part of a password, but you should try to make it unique by adding spaces or other characters plus numbers or other words to make the password harder to crack.”

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