This week, rapper Kanye West, now apparently known simply as Ye we’re told, had a well-publicised meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office.
The pair discussed a number of different things, with Kanye doing most of the talking it would seem. Setting aside the agenda of their meeting, one particular moment was extremely revealing…
Around half way through the meeting, the rapper pulled out his iPhone X to show the President the “iPlane 1” (to clarify, that’s not a real plane, rather a design concept by Shabtai Hirshberg) while telling the President that it’s this hydrogen powered plane that the Commander-in-Chief should be getting about in.
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But as Kanye opened his phone, he committed one of two very serious security faux-pas’. Firstly, he entered his password in front of dozens of video cameras pointing straight at him. If that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out Kanye’s password is (or, as we write this, was) 000000.
That’s not a good password. In fact, as passwords go, that’s probably one of the worst you can choose. Only a few years ago, a study by DataGenetics found that all zeros for your PIN was the third most common choice. Kanye’s iPhone would have actually advised against using that password when he set it, accurately stating that it is easily guessed.
Now, we didn’t write this straight away. It was only fair, after all, to give Kanye some time to change that password to something more sensible, which we’re sure he’s done by now (hopefully not to all 1’s.)
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Choosing simple passwords like that isn’t a good idea for a number of reasons. The obvious is that anyone with his phone has a much higher chance of breaking past the security. Secondly, if Kanye uses such obvious passwords for his iPhone, there is a good chance he’ll be equally as unwise with his other accounts, even online accounts that are always vulnerable to cyber crooks over the Internet.
No doubt there has been some interest in his various online accounts already by those who noticed Kanye’s Oval Office slip up. If we were Kanye, we’d get to reviewing those passwords fast.
For the uninitiated, passwords should not be words you’d find in the dictionary, and should have no obvious meaning to you (i.e. your date of birth.) They should contain letters, numbers and ideally at least 1 symbol. (It seems the list goes on and on, doesn’t it!)
Or use alternative, stronger protection, like TouchID if your phone supports it.
Bottom line, if you use a simple password like Kanye did, change it now.