Password management and crypto custody company Dashlane yesterday announced the third edition if its annual “Worst Password Offenders” list, with cryptocurrency investors sitting at number three on the list.

The purpose of the tongue-in-cheek ranking is to highlight password-related mistakes made by high profile individuals and organisations so as to sensitise the public about best practices for creating and managing passwords.

Crypto Investors Turn to Hypnosis

According to Dashlane, the number of passwords that the average internet user has to manage currently sits at around 200 – a figure which the company says will double to 400 by 2023.

Speaking about the objective of the list in the light of these findings, Emmanuel Schalit, Dashlane CEO said:

“Passwords are the first line of defense against cyber attacks. Weak passwords, reused passwords, and poor organizational password management can easily put sensitive information as risk. The sheer number of accounts requiring passwords means everyone is prone to make the same mistakes as the Password Offenders. We hope our list serves as a wake-up call to everyone to follow the best password security practices.”

Few people demonstrated the growing importance and difficulty of managing multiple passwords than crypto investors over the past year. Driven by a record-breaking bull run that saw bitcoin achieve an all-time high valuation on the cusp of $20,000, several casual investors with holdings potentially worth millions tried desperately to remember their long-forgotten bitcoin wallet passwords, even going as far as hiring hypnotists to extract the valuable information from their subconscious.

Password Safety Recommendations for Crypto Holders

Dashlane recommends three main precautions for crypto holders and other password users in order to prevent recurrences of the incidents that made it onto this year’s st offenders list. First of all, the company recommends that users ensure that all accounts are password-protected, including email accounts, servers, apps or anything that may contain sensitive personal data. The presence of a strong password it says is often the only line of defense between user data and hackers.

Next Dashlane recommends that users deploy strong passwords that avoid the risk of being guessed after a rudimentary amount of research into the user. According to the company, this means that passwords ideally should not contain names or proper nouns that can easily be associated with the user, or weak number sequences like the user’s date of birth. It is recommended that all passwords exceed eight characters and include a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols.

Finally, Dashlane says that users should ideally not reuse passwords, which means that each account should be protected with a unique password. This reduces the risk of hackers gaining access to a user’s sensitive data by compromising other accounts using the same password.

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