People are just realising they’re making 3 major password mistakes that make it easy for criminals to raid your account

A CYBER criminal can take over your account in just seconds, if you have a weak password.

Make sure you’re not making these common mistakes when it comes to keeping your accounts and personal information locked up.

To make sure you don't fall victim to hackers, it's wise to make your passwords a minimum of eight to 12 characters long and use a mix of special characters, numbers, and capital letters — To make sure you don’t fall victim to hackers, it’s wise to make your passwords a minimum of eight to 12 characters long and use a mix of special characters, numbers, and capital lettersCredit: PA:Press Association

Lowercase, no numbers and short

The most hackable passwords are ones that contain all lowercase letters or numbers and are less than eight characters long, according to new research by payments firm Dojo.

Some of these passwords can be guessed in less than a second.

You might be at risk if your passwords follow this format:

‘purple’
‘letmein’
‘202201’

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While it helps to mix things up a bit by throwing in a number, sometimes that’s not enough.

For example, ‘wednesday1’ takes over 2,000 seconds to crack – just because it has a number in it.

But it’s important to note that these passwords are still breakable from the perspective of a hacker – all they take is a little time.

To make sure you don’t fall victim to hackers, it’s wise to make your passwords a minimum of eight to 12 characters long and use a mix of special characters, numbers, and capital letters.

Work and home

Another mistake people make is using the same codes for both work and home accounts – or having the same password for multiple accounts, regardless of if they’re for work or pleasure.

It widens the chances of being attacked significantly, according to the payments firm.

“With 51 per cent of people using the same passwords for both work and personal accounts, it’s common for people to repeat password patterns that are easy to remember,” Dojo explained.

“But the study found that 365,174 passwords feature all lowercase letters and an average password length of eight characters.

“When using this password pattern hackers can access your data easily, as the number of combinations they need to try is lower. If you are using all lowercase letters for your passwords, it would take hackers just three seconds to guess.”

Nicknames and birthdays

Using nicknames or other words associated with yourself, such as your birthday, as a key code can also jeopardise your accounts.

According to Dojo, short passwords that are made up of nicknames, TV shows, colours and fashion brands are some of the most hackable in the world.

It’s best to avoid any personal information that is easily accessible through your online presence in your password.

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This includes school or pet names.

Try using a credible password manager – like Google’s new and improved one – to help you create unique, strong passwords for each account, so that you don’t have to remember them.