My favorite password is ALLENLUDDEN

I got an email from Yahoo! the other day.  At first I was so excited to hear from 1997.  That was a great year; everyone was running around crooning "Yahoooooooo!" and their website had everyone signing up for their own news pages and email.

But just like a friend who moves away and never calls or writes, I sort of lost touch with Yahoo! until they wrote to tell me that someone in Viet Nam was trying to log in to my email account.  In Viet Nam, this was.  Late on Tuesday, and here it was still early on Tuesday, so I cleverly deduced that something was amiss.

The email told me to go ahead and change my password for the sake of security, so I did that. I mean, the only email in that folder seems slightly dated, containing information that I might want to consider concerning the possible candidacy of one Mitt Romney for president, and several emails touting quinoa as the new wonder dry grain.  The first 27 times I typed in a new email, the Yahoo! brainiac told me that my suggestion was not strong enough to withstand this Viet Namese invasion, so I finally came up with one that will keep everyone out of my Yahoo email, including me.

But then later I saw an article that said that SplashData, a group that tracks such things, had a list of the most popular passwords of 2013, and here they are, along with the changes in each from the year before:

1.  123456 (Up 1)

2.  password (Down 1)

3.  12345678 (Unchanged)

4.  qwerty (Up 1)

5.  abc123 (Down 1)

6.  123456789 (New)

7.  111111 ( Up 2)

8.  1234567 (Up 5)

9.  iloveyou (Up 2)

10.  adobe123 (New)

11.  123123 (Up 5)

12.  admin (New)

13.  1234567890 (New)

14.  letmein (Down 7)

15.  photoshop (New)

16.  1234 (New)

17.  monkey (Down 11)

18.  shadow (Unchanged)

19.  sunshine (Down 5)

20.  12345 (New)

21.  password1 (up 4)

22.  princess (New)

23.  azerty (New)

24.  trustno1 (Down12)

25.  000000 (New)

Now.  I would think "123456789" would not be all that hard to crack.  How about a slight little change, such as "1235476890"?  And there is also information around that suggests that #22 - "princess" - is in use by a Mr. T. Brady from Boston, MA.

For anyone seeking a really fun password that also suggests a tasty and nutritious lunch, here is one I used to use but now pass along lovingly to you:  I_8_3_BLTs    Because, if you can eat three BLTs, you're having too much fun to waste time on the computer!