Unique Minnesota Names Are Some Of The Most-Hacked Passwords

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A new survey just revealed some of the easiest passwords to hack-- and a few familiar Minnesota words, names, and phrases made the list.

If you ask me, there are fewer things more annoying than constantly having to change your passwords. And we all have a TON of them to remember these days because it seems you need a username and password for EVERYTHING, right?

Fact: You'll soon need a password to go to the bathroom. (Okay, I made that up-- but I wouldn't be surprised if that's not too far off.) So I can understand why we want to use easy-to-remember words and numbers as passwords.

READ MORE: 5 Minnesotans Just Made the Richest People In The World List

But the problem is, if your password is easy for you to remember, it's also probably easy for cyber creeps to hack. In fact, a survey from the National Cyber Security Centre (that'd be England's version of the National Security Agency) has published a list of the most-hacked passwords.

And, surprisingly, '123456' is still *the* most-hacked password of all-time. That's right, many people-- 23.2 million of them-- have been hacked because '123456' was their password!  Really?!? That's followed by '123456789,' 'qwerty,' 'password,' and '1111111.'

But according to this BringMeTheNews story, several familiar uniquely-Minnesotan words also popped up on the most-hacked list. Fortunately, though, names like 'Twin Cities,' 'Minneapolis,' and 'Rochester' didn't make the cut. But fellow words like 'Minnesota,' 'Minnesota1,' 'Vikings,' 'Prince1999,' 'St.Paul,' and even 'Duluth' DID make the list.

So if your log-ins include any of those common Minnesota words or phrases without any extra numbers, signs, or other unique personalizations, you may want to...gulp... change those passwords. Because being 'Minnesota nice' won't work against those cyber criminals out to hack into your accounts, right?

Meanwhile, if you want to keep your Land of 10,000 Lakes pride going on your phone, keep scrolling for 31 beautiful, free phone wallpapers that are perfect for Minnesota lovers everywhere!

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