How safe is your password?

Choosing a unique password is rule number one for online security, but it seems plenty of people are still unwilling to accept the inconvenience, preferring passwords that are easy to remember, easy to type, and most importantly, easy for hackers to guess.

According to an annual list of the most commonly used passwords, published by password management software vendor SplashData, the most common password for 2011 was password, followed by 123456, 12345678, qwerty, and abc123.

Splashdata bases its results on lists of pilfered passwords published online by hackers. Also in the top 10 were monkey, 1234567, letmein, trustno1, and dragon.

A few tricky people thought replacing the letter o in ‘password’ with a zero would throw potential thieves off the scent, but that configuration came in at number 18.

Using your favourite sport could also be a bad idea, with both ‘baseball’ and ‘football’ making the list. Three names made the list – ashley, bailey and michael – as did sunshine, shadow, iloveyou, master, and superman.

Check out the full list below:

1. password
2. 123456
3. 12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football