A selection of great ways to make sure your data gets stolen
1 Common Words
Oddly enough, protecting your email account with the password 'password' isn't considered to be the epitome of secure computing. And neither should you use '12345678', 'qwerty' or 'football'. And, sci-fi fans, 'ncc1701d' and 'starwars' are also considered to be common and easily guessed passwords. Of course, that doesn't stop thousands, if not millions, of people using these words and phrases anyway. And, no doubt, they wonder why their email address is sending out spam to their contacts and why someone's ordered 15 PlayStation 4s from their Amazon account.
2 Birthday
PIN codes are often only four digits long, so you wouldn't think it would be that hard to remember a few of them. But people still struggle to do so, and for them it's tempting to use their birth date or that of a loved one. The problem with that, of course, is that anyone who can see your Facebook profile, for example, can probably also see when your birthday is. The same goes for your friends and family. A determined criminal won't have any problems finding this kind of information out about you, so using it for passwords is a terrible idea.
3 Post-Its
Of course, many people these days are aware of the importance of having strong passwords, and they assign enormously long, complex phrases to their individual accounts. Good stuff. But how to remember them all? Simple: write them all down on little bits of paper, and then stick them to your monitor. Yep, it's going to take some high-level sleuthing to crack that ingenious puzzle! Want to remember long passwords? Maybe try using a password manager like LastPass or Roboform.
4 No Password
Whether it's your wi-fi, router admin, PC or phone, there's always the option to forgo passwords altogether. That way, all you have to do is go straight to what you want, without any obstacles to pass at all. Fantastic - apart from the hugely obvious fact that this leaves you open to attack, data theft and disparaging looks from your more informed peers.
Almost as bad as no password is keeping the default one, which will be easily discovered and exploited by anyone looking to cause trouble or steal from you.
5 No System
A wise man (Harry Hill) once said, "You've got to have a system." He probably wasn't talking about passwords, but his advice is useful nonetheless. If you don't want or trust password managers, then a good way to remember all your strong, varied passwords is to have a system that only you know.
Maybe, for example, you could take the last two letters of the website you're on, add the name of your first pet, add the first two letters of the website, and then go back and swap all the L's for 1 's and the letter O's for zeroes. Don't do something like that, and you'll never remember all your passwords (unless all your passwords are 'password').