What 's You Password?

I recently stumbled across a fascinating report in a trade journal about passwords. I forget the source unfortunately, but it was making the point that surveys proved that most of the population uses the same passwords for accessing protected websites such as online banking, membership sites, subscriptions etc. I wrote some of them down at the time to show you:
password
123456
qwerty
abc123
letmein
password1
firstname
Unbelievable. Well, to me it's unbelievable. Please don't tell me that your favorite password is in this list, I'll be very upset.
There's an important lesson here. You knew there would be, didn't you? This survey provides powerful proof of just how little most people think. After all, how difficult is it to come up with a memorable word that means something special to you, but no one else? Important personal data is at stake in many cases, yet the stats show that the majority of people simply don't think this through. Their choice of password seems to be the first thing that comes into their mind.
It's no wonder that most eBay sellers are people who have defaulted to using just the most basic functions that they already know about. There's no creativity, no thinking outside the box, no challenging norms. Meanwhile people like you and me continue to profit from doing the opposite of the crowd.