Do you know how much personal information you’re giving away on social media? Every time you answer a quiz, fill in a survey or share a picture of your birthday, hackers are waiting to use it against you.
We look at how they do it, and what you can do to stop it.
Fake Instagram influencer shows you how hackers collect your data
You could be giving away your passwords on social media without even knowing about it, letting hackers get into your accounts in seconds.
This new instagram account highlights the hidden meaning behind every social post, revealing how easily Gen Z are giving away key security information in their captured highlights. Through what we share online, the pictures we post and the locations we tag, hackers and criminals can guess your password in seconds, putting your identity and your bank accounts at risk of being stolen.
We look at the most predictable passwords being used right now, which of your accounts is most likely to be hacked and how you can make your passwords stronger.
Did you know?
- 53% rely on memory to store passwords, meaning we immediately falter to easy passwords to remember, usually made up of information from our personal lives.
- 78% of Gen Z use the same password for everything, making every account you have easy to access for hackers.
- It costs a hacker just £744 to have full access to your phone, credit cards and social media profiles.
How you’re putting your personal information at risk
You may be posting a picture of your birthday balloons, a heartwarming picture of your new born baby, or snapping that ‘picture perfect’ bar you spent the weekend at. But those seemingly harmless posts could actually be giving away security information that gives hackers access to all your accounts.
The data behind the problem
LinkedIn, Facebook, eBay and Adobe are just some companies that have suffered major data breaches recently, where passwords and personal info have been stolen. But it’s not the only way for hackers to get access to your emails, apps or even bank accounts. With 78% of Gen Z using the same passwords for everything, the world is having a great big password problem. Add to that the fact that 53% of us use nothing but our memory to store passwords, it makes sense that we try and keep things simple.
However, while that might make things easier for us, it also makes them much easier for those who want our details. If they fall into the wrong hands, a password that’s easy to remember could make things very difficult. And given only 31.3% of us change our passwords once a year, once people are in, it could be hard to get them back out.
The most common passwords that hackers love
We all have things that are easier to remember, which can come in handy when it comes to passwords. However, the easier they are for us to remember, the easier they are for hackers to guess. It only takes 10 minutes on average for a hacker to work out a password under six characters, meaning many of the most popular passwords are also some of the most crackable.
What’s scarier is you could be giving away all the information a hacker needs from your social media posts alone. From your images, captions, location and date of posting, hackers can easily guess your memorable information that you use for your passwords.
Entertainment
#password written on notepad
#age and post date
The most popular social accounts criminals are looking to hack
Facebook is the most popular social media account for hackers to try and break into, with people searching on average 90,500 times a month on how to do it. But these criminals don’t just want to see the embarrassing pictures you’ve been tagged in – they want your data, and Facebook is full of it. Your date of birth, your mum’s maiden name, your pet’s name, your address and even your bank details can be found on Facebook if people know where to look, making it a goldmine for any criminal activity.
Instagram is the second most searched for, pulling in 60,500 searches a month. As it’s owned by Facebook, it shares a lot of the same information, meaning if you can get into one you can often get into the other.
Someway back, with only 6,600 searches a month, is Snapchat. The app is built around privacy, deleting messages as soon as you’ve read them, which makes any information you share harder to get hold of for hackers.
The most frequent names for passwords
What’s easier to remember than your own name, or the name of a loved one, partner or pet? If your name is Eve, the answer is nothing. Eve gets 7,169,777 uses in passwords online, more than Alex with 7,117,656, Anna with 6,512,390, and Max with 5,670,058.
Names are incredibly easy to find on social media, no matter who the name belongs to. Whenever you tag your partner, reveal the name of a family member or mention a person you idolise, just remember it might not be as innocent as it seems.
Ice, tea and pie are all common food passwords
Your favourite meal would make a great password, right? Well, not quite.
Variations of ice are the most popular food password. The word appears in 5,979,306 passwords currently in use in the UK, whether that’s in iced tea, ice cream or ice lolly. All tasty treats, all easy to guess.
Speaking of tea, that’s the second most popular food password, appearing 3,220,773 times. Us Brits love a cuppa, but sadly the hackers do too, and what they do might be harder to swallow. Pie is the food password that appears next. There are currently 2,980,932 iterations of it on sites across the internet, making up a healthy slice of our online security.
. 
Media and advertising employees manage more passwords than those in any other industry
Calendar conundrum – weekdays, months and even seasons are easy to guess
From birthdays to anniversaries, memorable dates are a classic password choice. The problem is, once someone’s worked them out, they’ve likely also worked out lots of codes to other things too. With dates being easy to find on social media, they could be something best avoided when it comes to making information secure.
Summer is the most popular password season
Everyone loves the summertime. Warm weather, long days, parties and, it seems, passwords are all a part of the sunny season, with 1,054,215 mentions of it currently being used.
Winter is some way back with 457,563, beating spring with 347,917 and autumn with 151,668.
Whatever season you prefer, there are only four to choose from, making it an easy job for anyone who wants in.
May babies make up more passwords than any other month
If your birthday falls in May, you’re one of 152,218 people who use it for their online password. June is the second most common with 66,097 uses, and August completes the top three with 63,457.
There are only 12 months to choose from, so no matter when you were born, with enough time the hacker will be able to figure out which one you’ve picked.
That Friday feeling is in 157,139 passwords
Living for the weekend, are we right? Friday means the end of the working week for many, and passwords for 157,139 people. It’s the most popular day of the week by far (in both passwords and life), beating Monday (ew) with 138,231 uses and Sunday with 128,170.
2010 is the most common year in passwords
It might be no surprise to see that 2010 is the most popular year for passwords. It’s the year the last cohort of Gen Z were born, who’ll just be using social media for the first time, and for many millennial parents perhaps the year their children were born too.
Whatever the reason, 2010 appears 10,000,000 times in passwords, more than any other year. 1987 is second with 8,400,000 uses, and 1991 is third with 8,300,000.
If you happened to be born on a Friday in May, in the summer of 2010, it might be time to change your security settings
51% of people use the same passwords for both work and personal accounts
Your data is worth £6.8 billion to criminals
Easy passwords could make an easy living for internal criminals. According to a recent report on internet fraud, the black market for your online accounts is worth a huge £6.8 billion, and what makes it worse, your passwords are extremely cheap to get hold of.
For the mere price of £744, a hacker could have everything they know to access your social media profiles, your phone, your credit card and whatever else they fancy exploiting. Amazon account? Hacked. Ebay? Gone. Your passwords open so much online, and if they’re easy to guess, all of that could soon be someone else’s.
A scammer could buy your credit and debit card details, all your online banking logins, passwords as well as your PayPal account information for a total of £619.40
90% of us are worried about passwords being stolen
Security fears are on the minds of most of us, with 90% of internet users worrying that their passwords could be hacked. However, despite that, the same password is used to access five different accounts on average, making that fear a very realistic possibility.
So what can you do to make your password safer and keep the criminals at bay?
69% of employees share passwords with co-workers to access information.
Our top password safety tips
Make your password long
The longer a password is, the harder it is to crack. There’s nothing stopping you using a whole sentence as your password, and it could make your account much more secure.
Nonsense makes sense
Nonsense phrases are much harder to guess than logical ones.
Mix things up
Use a mix of words, numbers, capital letters and symbols to add an extra level of protection.
Don’t use personal information
Anything like your name, birthday, favourite food or sports team is easy to find and hack into.
Don’t reuse passwords
Use different passwords for different accounts. It keeps them separate and safe, and means if someone guesses one, they won’t have access to everything else.
Want to make your online storage more secure?
Our encrypted cloud storage is a great place to store what matters, letting you access it wherever you like while keeping hackers at bay. It adds multiple layers of protection to your documents and assets, giving you peace of mind and adding extra armour to your passwords.
