SALT LAKE CITY — Apparently “ji32k7au4a83” is one of the most common passwords on the internet.
Gizmodo reported Tuesday that the phrase appeared in 141 different data breaches, according to data cataloged by Have I Been Pwned.
Robert Ou, a hardware and software engineer, spotted the collection of letters and numbers. He tried to figure out why it was so common.
- According to The Verge, Taiwanese internet users discovered that the phrase is actually a common collection of characters in Mandarin.
- See, “ji32k7au4a83” actually spells out the phrase “我的密碼 on a Taiwanese keyboard. That phrases, “wǒ de mìmǎ,” actually means “my password” in Mandarin, The Verge reports.
- Interestingly, the phrase “au4a83” also appeared in 1,495 different data breaches. Those letters and numbers combine to read “password” using the same Taiwanese keyboard, according to The Verge.
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Lessons: “The lesson here is that even if you’re using a custom keyboard that generates strings of letters and numbers that can mystify many English speakers, using something that equates to ‘password’ as your password is still a bad idea. Someone out there will know exactly what you’re trying to do,” according to The Verge.