Daily News Roundup: Your Passwords Are Probably Trash

Recently, the UK’s National Cyber Security Center paired up with Have I Been Pwned?’s Troy Hunt to conduct a survey that analyzed passwords of accounts that had been breached. Turns out that most users (still) suck at using strong passwords.

The top passwords found in the study? “123456,” followed by “123456789.” Other brilliant things, like “qwerty,” “password,” and “111111” rounded out the top five spots, with “123345678,” “abc123,” and “password1” all finding spots in the top 10. People’s names, band names, and sports teams were also among the most used (and most breached) passwords. Fantastic.

It’s no wonder we hear about new data breaches almost weekly these days—passwords like these do about as much to protect your data as not using one at all. If you find yourself using anything similar to these passwords—or even reusing the same passwords on multiple sites—it’s time to re-think your password strategy.

The good news is that we have your back. Choosing a strong password is actually easy; as is remembering those passwords. How? By using a password manager. It may seem a bit daunting to get started, but we can help with that too.

As an aside, if you’re curious about any of the passwords you currently use, you can cross-reference them with the Have I Been Pwned?’s database—and don’t worry, it’s completely safe. So check your passwords, change the ones that have been part of a breach (or are just generally weak), and get yourself a good password manager to help with it all—lest you find yourself on the wrong end of one of these lists.

In other news, Apple may be bringing some of iOS’ best features to macOS, Netflix is testing its own version of the I’m feeling lucky” button, Google Assistant is coming to third-party accessories, and a lot more.

• More iOS features may be coming to macOS: The word on the street is that macOS may be getting Screen Time, Siri Shortcuts, and more in macOS 10.5. The convergence grows. [The Verge]
• Netflix gets random: Hidden deep inside the Netflix Android app is a new “random” button that picks the next episode you watch for you, making TV-watching even more mindless than it already is. Yay? [Android Police]
• Google Assistant is coming to accessories: You can already launch Assistant on phones, tablets, Chromebooks, and smart speakers, but it looks like hardware accessories will soon be able to invoke the digital assistant. Keyboards, mice, styluses, and the like will all be prime candidates for the Assistant button. I’m in. [Chrome Unboxed]
• Samsung folds: It looks like the company is rethinking this Galaxy Fold thing for the time being—it canceled launch events in China that were set for this week. [Reuters]
• JC Penny drops Apple Pay: In a surprising move, retailer JC Penny has removed support for Apple Pay from its stores and app with absolutely no explanation why. It just sort of…disappeared. [9to5Mac]
• App betrayal: A recent study by the American Medical Association found that apps designed to help users quit smoking or cope with depression are also sharing their findings with Google and Facebook. 29 of the top 36 apps are sharing data, and only 12 of them disclose it in their privacy policy. Sickening. [JAMA Network]
• Austria wants to know who you really are: A new draft law in Austria would require users to give their real name and address before commenting on large public sites. Whoa. [Engadget]
• SuperTuxKart goes online: In more fun news, open source racing game SuperTuxKart hit a huge milestone this weekend: after 12 years in development, version 1.0 was released. And it includes online play! [Liliputing]
• God of War was almost totally different: If you’ve played the newest God of War game, then you know there’s an absolutely iconic moment around the midway point that changes the entire feel of the game. I don’t want to give any spoilers to anyone who hasn’t played, but that moment almost didn’t happen. [Gamespot]

In more fun news, over the weekend Android Police published a hilarious look at 13 times Google Assistant completely failed to provide the right information or context. As useful as digital assistants are, it’s a good (and fun) reminder that there’s still a long way to go before we have to worry about AI taking over the world.