Passwords are like the keys to your house: you use them every day, but almost never really think of them until you lose them. Or someone else finds them. The recent hack of Gawker, which operates sites such as Lifehacker, Gizmodo, and Deadspin, revealed some troubling news about the way many of us use passwords.
To put it simply, we don't use them well. In fact, if our passwords were deadbolts, many of us would be leaving the front door unlocked on a regular basis.

An analysis of almost 200,000 hacked Gawker passwords, as conducted by the Wall Street Journal, revealed that the most popular password by far was '123456.' Coming in second and third were 'password' and '12345678', respectively.

What does that tell us? For one thing, many of us still have not heeded the years of warnings and tips about password security. However, it's also clear that the password concept itself is out of date and poses a major security risk.

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