Since the advent of smartphones in the late 2000s, there has been a steady increase of people coming online to get information, join social media platforms, consume content for entertainment and even get services such as ordering food, making digital cash transactions, and more.
Thanks to the Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020, there are more people online than ever before. There are more than three billion and two billion active user base on Google's Android and Apple's iOS platforms, respectively. And, there are even more who use PCs around the world.
However, to keep users' accounts safe, technology companies offer security options to create unique IDs and passwords. They are personal and should not be shared with anybody. But, the problem is, remembering the password for every account and for easy remembrance, people keep the password short and most of the time just numbers 12345678 or even use 'password' as a passcode or use their birth date or their own name.
But, there are many tech-savvy hackers around the world who can predict and unlock such passwords in seconds and clean personal details or steal your money in a jiffy.
In a recent survey by NordPass, millions of people continue to use easy catchy words and numbers to lock their accounts, leaving them vulnerable to getting hacked.
In India, more than 34.90 lakh people are using just 'password' as a passcode to their online accounts. Other most popular passwords are 123456 and 12345678.
Interestingly, 75,000 plus people are using 'bigbasket' as their password. Other popular passcodes include 12345678, 123456789, pass@123, anmol123, abcd1234, googledummy, Indya123, and other very predictable passwords.
NordPass claims that most of the above-mentioned passwords can be cracked in less than three seconds. For unusual passwords--bigbasket, anmol123, and googledummy, it reportedly takes around five minutes, 17 minutes, and 23 minutes, respectively.
Even in the rest of the world, people are hare-brained too. Most used passwords are-- password, 123456, 123456789, guest, qwerty, 12345678, 111111, and more such easy-to-predict security keys.
We are almost at the end of 2022 and yet, despite the looming threats, people continue to be ignorant of their digital account security. If you can't remember the passwords, there are tailor-made apps such as NordPass and Password Managers, which can offer you a one-stop place to store and access your usernames and passwords anywhere and anytime.
In a related development, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are working to bring FIDO standard passwordless sign-in on devices next year.
Already, Google has set the ball rolling for a passwordless verification system 'passkeys' on Android and Chrome.
The search engine giant has invited app and website owners to incorporate its WebAuthn API for passkeys and tests, and share feedback.
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