If you’re the type of person who likes to look for random stuff on the Internet, one site that you may want to visit is HIBP or Have I Been Pawned? Aside from the curiosity factor, it would also be a good thing to check out if your password is really that secure. And if your password is a seemingly random number of letters and numbers like “ji32k7au4a83”, it’s not as uncommon as you might think as it has been spotted in 141 breaches.
It looks like it’s just a random string of characters but apparently, there’s a reason why this particular password is pretty common, well, at least in Taiwan. The short version is that in the Zhuyin Fuhao system for translating Mandarin, this translates to “my password” in English. So either Taiwanese users aren’t as creative in coming up with passwords or they think they’re being smart in doing so.
The HIBP site tells you if your email or your username has been involved in any of the major security breaches. It also lets you check if your password has been part of these data breaches. And apparently, “ji32k7au4a83” has been detected in 141 breaches, which may not be such a big number but is still significant enough.
If you want to check out the more detailed and geeky explanation as to this particular password, check out the source link. But the point really of this is to tell you that you should always be more random in choosing passwords to avoid any sort of security breach. You might want to try using some of those password managers to make life more convenient.
VIA: Gizmodo
