And you thought picking your kids’ name was tough

We can thank thieves for so many things that make our lives so much more difficult.

Think of all the times you’ve second guessed whether or not you locked your front door, your car door, your garage door — would you care as much if we weren’t in an age of “get what you can for free” – even if it means stealing someone’s stuff.

Someone’s stuff to me always meant bikes, cars, jewelry – concrete things one can grab and go. Who could have predicted your concern now about an 8 character key that basically unlocks your life to anybody who can crack it.

Welcome to the age of the password.

Typically 8 characters long (Hey p-a-s-s-w-o-r-d is 8 characters, too) and so difficult for anybody to crack that the owner of the password usually has a very difficult time remembering what the hell it is, too. Add to that the fact that the creator of the password can forget it, but not crack his own password; and you’ve got a kid out of high school who can hack into your bank account because he can figure out your password in a matter of seconds and folks (deep breath), we’ve got an epidemic on our hands.

And unfortunately, it’s an epidemic that you can control and have created. Here’s why.

Let’s take a look at some of the most popular passwords being used:

Anyone can see why these people are getting hacked into. There’s no creativity here.

Now let’s take a look at the top ten kids names:

Not a single well-known Joe or Jane on the name list.

But we do have a 123456 leading off our list of top passwords.

Folks, maybe identity theft and online crime wouldn’t be at such a high rate if everybody wasn’t doing everything online and using passwords like 123456. Maybe, if you took a few minutes to think of something just a little more creative than 123456 — something as boldly creative as Jayden or Chloe for your password would do much better — then we wouldn’t be worrying about how freaking complex a password has to be to operate safely online.

While I want to point my fingers at thieves, it really comes down to you.

Get smart. Get creative. Get a real password.