The Passwords Twitter doesn't want you to use

The Wundercounter blog has a list of all of the passwords embedded in Twitter's signup page. The list is a pretty broad list of bad passwords that Twitter users probably use more than we might like to hope after years of explaining the need for good passwords. Old favorites like 123456, abc123, and password show up, as does computer, many first names, and of course, twitter.

It seems like most organizations have at least one common password that users tend to gravitate to. At colleges and universities, it tends to be a school spirit oriented password, and for websites, it often involves the name of the site. What's your organization's oft joked about common password?

(flickr Creative Commons attribution licensed image courtesy 7son75)

Passwords...in Newsweek?

You know that passwords and their problems have gone mainstream when Newsweek carries an article about them. Nick Summers describes current password technology issues, as well as some of the potential future solutions. It even describes brute forcing and the issues with simple passwords - meaning that your users might come ask a few good questions.

That's amazing. I've got the same combination on my luggage...

Wired's Danger Room blog quotes analysis of a recent Hotmail, MSN, and Microsoft Live account leak which showed that 123456 was the most common password.

In my experience universities tend to find that their most common passwords are catch phrases common to the school. Corporations that run password audits may find similar patterns in their own users passwords selections.

Does your organization have a common password?