Hotmail banning common passwords to beef up security
Passwords are a perennial problem in computer security. We all know that we're meant to pick "secure" passwords and never reuse them, but few of us actually bother. One consequence this can cause is losing access to our accounts; some bad guy figures out the password to our World of Warcraft, Steam, or e-mail account, and then proceeds to trash it. To try to ensure that Hotmail accounts don't fall prey to such attacks, Microsoft will soon be changing its password policy, to forbid the use of particularly common passwords.
This means that anyone creating a new Hotmail account or changing the password of an existing account won't be able to use obvious and common passwords like "123456" or "password." The system will also block common phrases, like "ilovecats." In the future, Microsoft may also extend this ban on obvious passwords to existing accounts at a later date.
