The problem of choosing a password is a very good question. Let's start by specifying which passwords not to choose.
-The famous 0123456 must absolutely be banned: it would be the first to be tried by an individual or a malicious program.
-A date of birth: too short, composed only of numbers, and that others know.
-A first name or the nickname of an animal: too frequent.
-A word from the dictionary: most programs looking for passwords have an internal dictionary.
In 2015, the revelation of data from users of the dating site Ashley Madison after its hack showed that the passwords most often used are the following
(source in french):
| Password | Number of users |
| 123456 | 120511 |
| 12345 | 48452 |
| password | 39448 |
| DEFAULT | 34275 |
| 123456789 | 26620 |
| qwerty | 20778 |
| 12345678 | 14172 |
| abc123 | 10869 |
| pussy | 10683 |
| 1234567 | 9468 |
You should therefore absolutely avoid choosing your passwords from this list.
But then, how do you choose a good password? Here are some answers:
--It must be long enough. Brute force attack programs are currently capable of testing all combinations up to 12 characters in a short time.
So, you must choose a password of 13 characters or more.
--Then you can choose a random one, or choose one generated by a program like, for example, ndvvhpn34phfm1,
but you will not be able to remember it, but it's okay if you use software like GdPerso to store it.
See my article on internet security or go to the GdPerso page.
Finally, to check if your password is in password dictionaries available on the internet,
you can enter it on haveibeenpwned.com.
Be careful not to type the password you are really using as is, or change it after entering it,
this site may be able to store the passwords entered there.
