The 25 Worst Superyacht Computer Passwords

When was the last time you changed your vessel computer passwords? If you are like most people, you’ve never changed any of them—you just keep signing up for new websites with the same password over and over again.

You even use the same password, or combinations of passwords, to "secure" your devices.

And you may be one of the millions of people around the world using one of the top 25 worst passwords of 2014 (meaning they are the most common). Here is the list, reported by Splash Data News:

1. 123456  2. password 3. 12345 4. 12345678 5. qwerty

6. 123456789 7. 1234 8. baseball 9. dragon 10. football

11. 1234567 12. monkey 13. letmein 14. abc123 15. 111111

16. mustang 17. access 18. shadow 19. master 20. michael

21. superman 22. 696969 23. 123123 24. batman 25. trustno1

 Do any of these passwords look familiar? If you are using them or something similar on your superyacht computers or devices, that’s not safe. Your accounts could be hacked in a matter of seconds. But you can take steps today to greatly improve your online account security.

Building more secure passwords

You’ve probably heard lots of advice to “create a strong password with a combination of upper and lower case letters, symbols, and numbers.” Sounds good, but HOW do you actually go about formulating a good password?

The following video by SophosLabs called How to Pick a Proper Passord is the best advice I’ve seen recently on the subject:

A few more password pointers

The Splash Data article makes some additional suggestions when creating computer passwords:

Don’t use a favorite sport as your password – “baseball” and “football” are in top 10, and “hockey,” “soccer” and “golfer” are in the top 100. Don’t use a favorite team either, as “yankees,” “eagles,” “steelers,” “rangers,” and “lakers” are all in the top 100.

Don’t use your birthday or especially just your birth year – 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992 are all in the top 100.

While baby name books are popular for naming children, don’t use them as sources for picking passwords. Common names such as "michael," "jennifer," "thomas," "jordan," "hunter," "michelle," "charlie," "andrew," and "daniel" are all in the top 50.

Also in the top 100 are swear words and phrases, hobbies, famous athletes, car brands, and film names.

For more information, you can also read Andy Levy's post from September, 2013:

How Hackable Are Your Vessel Computer Passwords?

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Amy Levy is Director of Marketing for Great Circle Systems. She publishes the Yacht Technology Blog and is always looking for interesting yacht IT topics to explore. You can email Amy at amy@greatcirclesys.com to suggest new blog topics.