Twitter bans 370 passwords for being too obvious

Posted by Caitlin on December 28th, 2009

TechCrunch has unearthed a list of 370 passwords that cannot be used when registering a new Twitter account. Some of these passwords are known to be weak and obvious, like "123456" and "password." But many are seemingly random words that might surprise you, like "monkey," "rosebud," or "wizard." The list also includes phrases like "iloveyou" and "biteme," popular names, and simple numeric patterns.

A random word, phrase, name, or numeric pattern might seem adequately secure, but passwords should include a combination of upper and lowercase letters and numbers. Longer passwords are stronger than short ones. If you can include special characters like "!" or "&," even better. A name or a single word that can be found in the dictionary is too easily guessed by a person or a hacking script. And if you reuse the same password for multiple websites, you put yourself at a much higher risk for identity theft.

Choose strong passwords, don't reuse them over multiple sites, and consider investing in identity theft protection, just in case.