Security News > 2020 > May > 'Hackers Google people': Millions still using sports team, hometown, band, or child names as passwords
Lancaster found that millions of people are still using their favorite song, sports team, or superhero as their password, all of which are easily discoverable by cybercriminals doing routine searches of a person's social media profiles.
Lancaster said the explosion of digital platforms that billions of people have to use for work, education and pleasure have forced people into an untenable situation where they feel they have no choice but to reuse passwords for dozens of accounts.
In his research of passwords leaked to the Dark Web, he found that many people are still using very basic passwords and variations of information related to things they love.
Some even put the name of their favorite sport, like "Football" or "Baseball" as their password while others use band and song names like "Blink182," "Beatles," and "8675309." Lancaster noted that in our hyper-sharing environment with dozens of social media sites, all of this information about a person's interests can be found fairly easily, making it simple for cybercriminals to guess passwords and variations.
Even though many of these people are vital to efforts to combat the virus' spread, Australian cybersecurity expert Robert Potter told the Washington Post that after digging through the trove of data, he discovered 48 people had "Password" as their password while dozens of people used their first name or "Changeme" as passwords.