These are the ten weakest passwords used online

Yikes.

Although it might not be something you've thought much about previously, having strong passwords for online websites is absolutely crucial. If your password is construed as weak, you're leaving yourself open to potential hacking and no one wants that. According to The Daily Mail, a list of the ten most popular passwords were compiled from a leaked Yahoo database and some of them are quite frankly, ridiculous. Below is the list in full:

• 123456
• password
• welcome
• ninja
• abc123
• 12345678
• 123456789
• sunshine
• princess
• qwerty

Speaking about the password research which he presided over and went on to write a paper about, Dr Jeff Yan said:

"Why do [some] use such obvious passwords? A main reason I think is that they’re either unaware of or don’t understand the risks of online security. "Just like everybody knows what one should do when red lights are on in the road, eventually everybody will know 123456 or the like is not a good password choice".

As well as the aforementioned passwords, researchers at Lancaster University and Chinese universities Peking and Fujian Normal, said that other people based their passwords on personal information using their names, ages and birthdays. Using this information which hackers could potentially gain access to, those conducting the study created algorithms to help them guess people's passwords. They guessed correctly for over 73% and on that worrying note, I'm off to change passwords for everything I can think of!