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Top 10 worst passwords revealed

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Password. (Duncan Alfreds, Fin24)
Password. (Duncan Alfreds, Fin24)

Cape Town - Passwords are central to your digital security and using your favourite sports team as a password is a bad idea because it makes your login easy to guess says a specialist company.

According to password management firm SplashData, the worst two passwords (“123456” and “password”) remain unchanged from 2011, based on data from three million leaked passwords.

However, sports-related passwords have featured prominently in the 2015 password list.

“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, chief executive of SplashData.

Here are the worst sports passwords that make it easy for hackers to crack your online accounts:

READ: 8 top tips for hacker-proof passwords

1 football
2 baseball
3 hockey
4 soccer
5 golfer
6 yankees
7 jordan
8 chelsea
9 rangers
10 nascar

To make passwords stronger and relevant, SplashData recommends mixing characters, numbers and upper case letters in longer passwords of at least eight characters.

“It’s okay to use your favourite team names as part of your passwords, but to make them stronger you should add numbers, symbols or a combination of names to make the password much harder to crack,” said Slain.

READ: How to check your password strength

You should avoid using the same password on multiple sites and words found in a dictionary are also a bad idea.

- Follow Duncan on Twitter

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