Worst passwords of 2014 are just as awful as you can imagine

Please sit down. We need to have a talk. It seems some important points about computer safety and security have completely gone over the heads of a certain portion of the population. If you're one of those people whose passwords look like "9$RxkU#55zx!%winning1," you can go ahead and leave. If your password looks like "1234567890" or "qwerty," it's time to repent and change your ways.

SplashData has released its annual list of the most common passwords found on the Internet, and it looks like 2014 has been another corker. The champ from 2013, "123456," is once again top of the pops. Nine of the top 25 worst passwords are strictly numerical, featuring variations on a theme, with "12345," "123123" and "111111" all landing on the list.

The runner-up for worst password is also the same as for 2013. You guessed it. It's the highly imaginative "password." The list was culled from an analysis of 3.3 million leaked passwords that came out during 2014. Most of the passwords are from North American and Western European accounts.

Online security expert Mark Burnett assisted SplashData with the study. Despite the bleakness of the passwords, he has some cause for hope. "The good news is that it appears that more people are moving away from using these passwords. In 2014, the top 25 passwords represented about 2.2 percent of passwords exposed. While still frightening, that's the lowest percentage of people using the most common passwords I have seen in recent studies," Burnett says.

There are some newcomers to the list this year, and they seem to show a rising obsession with superheroes and perhaps "Game of Thrones." The passwords "superman," "batman" and "dragon" all ranked.

Here's the complete list. If you see one of your passwords on it, then you should go change it right away.

1) 123456
2) password
3) 12345
4) 12345678
5) qwerty
6) 1234567890
7) 1234
8) baseball
9) dragon
10) football
11) 1234567
12) monkey
13) letmein
14) abc123
15) 111111
16) mustang
17) access
18) shadow
19) master
20) michael
21) superman
22) 696969
23) 123123
24) batman
25) trustno1