The 25 Worst Passwords of 2012 and 2013

If any of your passwords are on this list, then shame on you -- 

and go change them now.

SplashData, which makes password management applications, has released its 2013 list of the 25 worst passwords based on files containing millions of stolen passwords posted online in the last year. “123456″ now tops “password,” which normally leads the round-up.

Here’s the full list:

123456

password

12345678

qwerty

abc123

123456789

111111

1234567

iloveyou

adobe123

123123

admin

1234567890

letmein

photoshop

1234

monkey

shadow

sunshine

12345

password1

princess

azerty

trustno1

000000

“123456″ and “123456789″ were a couple of the most popular passwords believed to belong to Adobe users, according to a list published by security consulting firm Stricture Consulting Group in Nov. 2013 after Adobe confirmed a customer data breach a month earlier. That would also explain why “adobe123″ is at number 10 and “photoshop” is at number 15 on SplashData’s 2013 list.

Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData, said in a statement: “Seeing passwords like ‘adobe123’ and ‘photoshop’ on this list offers a good reminder not to base your password on the name of the website or application you are accessing.”

LIST: These Are the 25 Worst Passwords of 2012

If any of your passwords are on this list, then shame on you — and go change them now.

SplashData, which makes password-management applications, has released its annual Worst Passwords list compiled from common passwords that are posted by hackers. The top three — “password,” “123456″ and “12345678″ — have not changed since last year. New ones include “jesus,” “ninja,” “mustang,” “password1″ and “welcome.” Other passwords have moved up and down on the list.

The most surprising addition is probably “welcome.”

“That means people are not even changing default passwords,” SplashData CEO Morgan Slain tells TIME Tech. “It doesn’t take that much time to make a new password.”

You should have different passwords for all your accounts. To make it easier to remember them all, Slain suggests thinking about passwords as “passphrases.” For instance, use a phrase like “dog eats bone” and add underscores, dashes, hyphens and other punctuation marks to satisfy the special-character requirement: “dog_eats_bone!”

(MORE: Two-Minute Video: How to Create Strong Online Passwords)

Here’s the full list:

1. password

2, 123456

3. 12345678

4. abc123

5. qwerty

6. monkey

7. letmein

8. dragon

9. 111111

10. baseball

11. iloveyou

12. trustno1

13. 1234567

14. sunshine

15. master

16. 123123

17. welcome

18. shadow

19. ashley

20. football

21. jesus

22. michael

23. ninja

24. mustang

25. password1

If any of your passwords are on this list, then shame on you and go change them now.

Heavy Internet users show symptoms of addiction

Young adults who are heavy users of the Internet may also exhibit signs of addiction, scientists, including Indian-origin researchers, have found.

Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Duke University Medical Center and the Duke Institute of Brain Sciences compared Internet usage with measures of addiction.

The research, presented on December 18 at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunications Systems in Chennai, India, tracked the Internet usage of 69 college students over two months.

It revealed a correlation between certain types of Internet usage and addictive behaviours.

"The findings provide significant new insights into the association between Internet use and addictive behaviour," said Dr Sriram Chellappan, an assistant professor of computer science at Missouri S&T and the lead researcher of the study.

At the beginning of the study, the 69 students completed a 20-question survey called the Internet-Related Problem Scale (IRPS). The IRPS measures the level of problem a person is having due to Internet usage, on a scale of 0 to 200.

This scale was developed to identify characteristics of addiction, such as introversion, withdrawal, craving, tolerance and negative life consequences.

The researchers simultaneously tracked the campus Internet usage of participating students over two months.

Chellappan, working with Dr P Murali Doraiswamy, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Duke University Medical Center, found that the range of IRPS scores among participating students over the two-month period ranged from 30 to 134 on the 200-point scale.

The average score was 75. Participants' total Internet usage ranged from 140 megabytes to 51 gigabytes, with an average of 7 gigabytes.

The subjects' Internet usage was divided into several categories, including gaming, chatting, file downloading, email, browsing and social networking (Facebook and Twitter).

The total IRPS scores exhibited the highest correlations with gaming, chatting and browsing, and the lowest with email and social networking.

The researchers also observed that specific symptoms measured by the scale correlated with specific categories of Internet usage. They found that introversion was closely tied to gaming and chatting; craving to gaming, chatting and file downloading; and loss of control to gaming.

"About 5 to 10 per cent of all Internet users appear to show web dependency, and brain imaging studies show that compulsive Internet use may induce changes in some brain reward pathways that are similar to that seen in drug addiction," said Doraiswamy.

The team cautioned that the current study is exploratory and does not establish a cause and effect relationship between Internet usage and addictive behavior.