As part of moving customers from one hosting system to another, we are setting up their email accounts with the same password they are currently using. Based on what I’ve seen so far, here’s some tips for guessing email passwords:
- Try using the left hand side of the email address. This seems to be common for role accounts (e.g. sales@example.com has a password ’sales’).
- Try using the domain name (w/out the TLD). Try part of the domain if it is two separate words.
- Want to get in to a coworker’s email? If your domain admin assigns you a generic password when they create your account you can be pretty sure they use the same password for every one they set up and that hardly anyone has changed theirs.
- Do you know the person’s hobby? Try that. Or just guess on some common hobbies and the associated noun (e.g. running and runner).
- Try ‘password’. Yeah, you’d be surprised…
- Try the person’s first name, last name, first and last concatenated, etc.
- Do you know the person’s role in a company? Try that. e.g. ’sales’, ‘marketing’, ’shipping’, etc.
Anyone have any other tips?
