Blackberry’s odd list of forbidden passwords includes characters from Winnie the Pooh and more
List meant to protect clueless from using popular passwords but leaves many confused behind reasoning
For a while now, Blackberry has had in place a list of 106 prohibited passwords that device owners cannot use when setting up their Blackberry ID account. For all of its intents and purposes, the list is supposed to be a good thing; after all, it’s meant to save the clueless from using easily hackable passwords like “123456” and “password”.
What’s confusing, though, and this is why the list is making headlines now even though it’s been in place for a while, is that there are some pretty odd choices as to what makes a bad password.
For instance, ALL of the characters found in Winnie the Pooh are prohibited.
None of the major characters in Winnie the Pooh are allowed to be used as a password when setting up a Blackberry ID.
That’s right — from “poohbear” and “piglet” to “rabbit”, “eeyore”, and “tigger”. And it doesn’t stop there — as a matter of fact, the list is full of popular fictional characters, including “mickey”, “donald”, “barney”, “batman”, and more.
While it might be able to justify some of these names as being popular enough to be used as passwords on a frequent basis, some others on the list simply don’t makes sense. For instance, Calvin is included, but not Hobbes. Butthead is on there, but not Beevis. Users can choose scarecrow or tinman, but not Dorothy or wizard.
Moving beyond characters, both Monday and monday are on the list, but none of the other days make the list. Molson is on there, but not Budweiser. Baseball, football, and hockey make the list. Not mentioned: basketball.
Take a look for yourself at the Blackberry forbidden password list and see what other oddities you can find:
1=123456
2=12345678
3=123abc
4=a1b2c3
5=aaaaaa
6=abc123
7=abc123
8=abcdef
9=amanda
10=andrew
11=angel
12=asdfgh
13=august
14=avalon
15=bandit
16=barney
17=baseball
18=batman
19=biteme
20=brandy
21=buster
22=butthead
23=calvin
24=canada
25=changeme
26=chelsea
27=coffee
28=computer
29=cowboy
30=diamond
31=donald
32=dorothy
33=dragon
34=eeyore
35=falcon
36=fishing
37=football
38=freedom
39=fu**me
40=fu**you
41=gandalf
42=george
43=harley
44=hello
45=helpme
46=hockey
47=iloveyou
48=internet
49=jennifer
50=jonathan
51=jordan
52=letmein
53=maggie
54=marina
55=master
56=matthew
57=merlin
58=michael
59=michelle
60=mickey
61=mike
62=miller
63=molson
64=Monday
65=monday
66=monkey
67=mustang
68=natasha
69=ncc1701
70=newpass
71=newyork
72=pamela
73=password
74=patrick
75=pepper
76=piglet
77=poohbear
78=pookie
79=princess
80=qwerty
81=rabbit
82=rachel
83=ranger
84=rocket
85=secret
86=service
87=shadow
88=snoopy
89=soccer
90=sparky
91=spring
92=steven
93=success
94=summer
95=sunshine
96=thomas
97=tigger
98=trustno1
99=victoria
100=whatever
101=wizard
102=zapata
103=blackberry
104=blackberryid
105=bbidentity
106=playbook
Story via: networkworld.com
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