Bad news for everyone protecting their “BLINK182FullDiscography+Singles /LIVE” cloud uploads with overly literal passwords: your treasure trove of dated pop punk may be compromised by hackers.
A story from CNN’s Rob Picheta drops this bombshell as part of a look into the results of a National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) survey that “analyzed passwords belonging to accounts worldwide that had been breached.”
While the most common passwords are mainly Fort Knox-grade combinations like “123456,” “qwerty,” “abc123,” and “password,” the NCSC also looked at the most popular names (of people, bands, or sports teams) and phrases used across the globe.
Somehow, perhaps because a lot of people have just stuck with whatever they came up with when they first got a Hotmail account, “blink182" was “the most popular musical artist” found in the survey. Containing both letters and numbers, it’s at least a bit more complicated than a few of the other popular name passes—like “liverpool,” “michael,” “ashley,” or “superman.”
Still, as even Travis Barker himself kinda, sorta seems to endorse, all the faux-hawked, sex pun-loving people out there still using “blink182,” need to grit their teeth, mutter a quick “Dammit,” and get to growing up with something as hacker-proof as “eN3m@of7h3s7a7e.” Sure, complicated passwords apparently aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, but as the NCSC’s Technical Director advises, a string of “three random but memorable words” are going to do a better job protecting your information.
Or, y’know, if all of this seems too difficult, just change it to something comfortable and familiar, like, say, “sum41.” Or just follow this guy’s lead and hope for the best.
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