Roughly 150,000 unimaginative Americans made the simple six-digit password their key to unlocking their computer or cell phone — which would make it real easy for hackers to guess.

Also making the Top 10 dumbest passwords this year are “Password,” “12345678,” “qwerty” and — perhaps the favorite of those with limited recall — “12345,” according to a California tech company.

Those with just a little imagination picked a password from pop culture, the company revealed.

As “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” takes cinemas by storm, “starwars” became No. 16 on the company’s Top 100 worst passwords of 2017.

“Unfortunately, while the newest episode may be a fantastic addition to the ‘Star Wars’ franchise, ‘starwars’ is a dangerous password to use,” said Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData, which compiled the list from the millions of passwords stolen in huge cyberattacks and then released publicly.

“Hackers are using common terms from pop culture and sports to break into accounts online because they know many people are using those easy-to-remember words,” Slain said.

Other notable bad passwords include “letmein” (No. 7), “login” (No. 14) and “trustno1” (No. 25).

On the raunchier side of things, “a–hole” made the list at No. 34, and “f–kyou” was at No. 52.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) notes that we tend to come up with characters that are easily guessed because humans have only a limited ability to memorize complicated strings of characters.

In response, online services often force users to adopt increasingly complex and hard-to-remember passwords. This, however, has not greatly reduced hacking numbers.

In other words, previous guidelines have resulted in passwords that are harder for humans to remember while making them no more difficult for computers to guess.

In May, NIST released new guidelines calling for the elimination of special character requirements, and urged online services to allow for longer passwords that can include spaces. Strings of random words are easier for humans to remember, and harder for computers to guess.

So, if you decide to stick with “starwars” as your password, may the force be with you.

source: New York Post

These phrases are from the text. Can you fill in the missing words?

1. strings of …… words

2. a …… ability to memorize

3. simple six-digit ……

4. takes cinemas by …..

5. are …… guessed

Key

1. random

2. limited

3. password

4. storm

5. easily

Friend was used as a verb as early as the 13th century, but it fell out of use until recently. The popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook gave the verb friend new meaning. If you add someone to your social network, you are friending that lucky soul. Removing someone from your network can be called unfriending. Unfriend is another word that’s existed in English since the 13th century when it was used as a noun to mean “an enemy.”

Troll 

In Internet slang, a troll is a person who posts deliberately antagonizing comments. Though the term troll evokes the ugly creatures featured in Scandinavian folklore, the origin of Internet trolling is far likelier from an Old French term that was used in the context of fishing. On the water, a troll is a lure used to bait fish. Perhaps the best advice for dealing with trolls is offered by the hacktivist group Anonymous: “Do not argue with trolls–it means they win.”

Like 

English speakers have been liking since the 9th century, and having likes and dislikes since the 15th century. But the rise of social media has given the term a new relevance. On various social networks, if you wish to show appreciation for a post, you can like it. Sometimes called hearting, favoriting, or upvoting, liking has become an important social-media metric.

Link 

Sometimes also called hyperlinks and URLs, links are objects, often text or images, that when clicked, bring you to another location on the web. Likely hailing from the Proto-Indo-European kleng meaning “to bend, turn,” this term emerged in English in the 15th century, and was used early on to describe loops forming a chain. Links can take you down a never-ending path of Internet rabbit holes, so be careful before you click.

Address 

While the noun address has been used by English speakers since the 1400s, the sense of “the place or the name of the place where a person, organization, or the like is located” did not surface until the 1600s. In the 1940s, a new technological sense of address emerged, making way for the introduction of such compounds as email address, web address, and IP address, all pointing to virtual locations.

Surf 

When surf first entered English in the 1600s, it referred to waves or the movement of waves. The late 1800s saw a new sense of the word: “to ride or be carried on the breakingcrest of a wave, esp. using a surfboard.” In the 1980s this sense was metaphorically extended to apply to channel-surfing on cable television. By the early ’90s, this sense was further extended to the Internet. However, 20 years later, this term has lost its hipness, and Internet users today might opt for a more tongue-in-check expression such as cyberloafing.

Block 

If you block someone on a social network, you make various traces of your online presenceinvisible to that person so that he or she cannot interact with you. This sense only came about recently, though English speakers have been blocking since the 16th century. Block came to English directly from the Old French block meaning “log.” The noun sense of block existed in English over 200 years before the verb came along.

source: dictionary.com

Some other Internet words. Can you match the words with the definitions?

Key:

1. c.

2. g.

3. a.

4. b.

5. f.

6. d.

7. e.