What's the point of passwords?

Passwords are used to protect all kinds of things including bank accounts, email accounts and so on and so forth.

The idea is that only you know the password, so only you can have access. Simple enough so far.

But if your password is easy to guess then it's as good as useless for protecting against someone who really wants to get into your Inbox. Yet many people, seemingly lacking confidence in their powers of recollection, use passwords that border on the idiotic.

Analysis of the details of thousands of Hotmail accounts that initially appeared on a web forum (though later on it was revealed that Gmail and Yahoo Mail users were at risk too) show that 123456 is the most common password.

Honestly. 123456. Followed by 123456789. 111111 is also common, as is 000000 and 654321 (brilliant idea! The numbers one to six but in reverse - no one will ever figure it out!)

There is also a worrying tendency to use names as passwords. Alejandra, Alberto, Tequiero, Daniel and Roberto all figure in the analysis. You might as well not use a password if you're going to use something so easy to figure out.

How to: Protect your passwords

This stupidity has to end and I'm proposing that we have a radical rethink about our attitude to passwords. The answer is to write them down.

This may go against everything we have been told in the past about password security, but because we think we shouldn't write passwords down we deliberately pick very simple ones that we know we'll remember.

And 99.9 per cent or more of the people who may try to access your email won't do it from your computer - they'll be hundreds or thousands of miles away. They won't be able to see the sticky note you keep inside your desk diary where the password is written, or find it in your wallet.

So make it complex - use upper case, lower case, letters, numbers and even special characters if you can. And write it down, keep the piece of paper out of sight but easily accessible to you, and you will reduce your risk of being hacked many, many times.

And if you don't want to take my word for it, I refer you to Sean Sullivan of security firm F-Secure.