If you have been closely following the Sony pictures hack story that dominated news headlines in the last weeks of 2014, you might certainly be aware about the importance of cyber security. With even large corporations that have millions of dollars to spend on security falling prey to a hack, it is anyone’s guess how vulnerable a normal Internet user could be to such a hack. With a large percentage of the population hooked on to the Internet to manage even small things in their lives, almost every detail of their lives can be found on the Internet. In most cases, what stands between a person and a hacker looking to steal information from them is a simple password.
And that’s where the problem lies.
Most people in the United States are simply too lax about their passwords – and cyber security in general. While this was an already known fact, Jimmy Kimmel on his show decided to find out how bad the situation really is. In the latest edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live, he sent his crew scouting for victims” on the streets of Los Angeles. The response from several people on the Hollywood Boulevard was astonishing to say the least, reports CNET !
Why?
It took just a few seconds for the interviewer to get the person’s password. While some people did not divulge it upfront, all the interviewer had to do was to ask some related questions and behold! the password was revealed. Then there were others who simply blurted out their passwords without thinking twice.
In the video, you can see how a woman thought she was smart when she told the interviewer that her password was her pet dog’s name followed by the year of graduation from high school. Then, the interviewer asks her some indirect questions to which she reveals her dog’s name and her year of graduation – and voila, her password is out in the open! Then there was another lady whose password was her cat’s name followed by a random number. After a little prodding, her password too was for everyone to guess.
For the men feeling proud about just the ladies being caught with their passwords in the open, we should tell you that there were men who were equally lax about their passwords. Two of the men who were interviewed gave out their passwords with relative ease.
The video was uploaded earlier today and is going viral as we file this story. That said, several people have questioned the authenticity of the video and wonder of the people shown in the video were just actors who were hired by folks at Jimmy Kimmel Live to act dumb.
What do you think?
[Image Via YouTube]