The never-ending stream of news concerning hacks into all kinds of organisations (Sony being the main topic of discussion at present) continues to reveal some very disturbing facts regarding password re-use.

According to researcher Tony Hunt who had access to some of the data that was exposed from a recent Sony hack which included email addresses and plain text passwords. He then compared the data with an earlier hack on Gawker (a company that runs a series of blogs on media, IT and other issues). What was interesting was the number of accounts (based on an identical email address in both data sets) with identical passwords. How many people were in this people category?

Sixty-seven per cent!

THAT is one of the reasons everyone is urging affected users to change their passwords. On every site that they have visited previously, not just the hacked ones.

In fact, following on fro this, it would be safe to say that a good percentage of those email addresses could be accessed with the passwords included in the hacked data. That's if anyone would be brave enough to try.

So, what should you do? Clearly it is difficult to have a different password for every site that demands one. Experts suggest maintaining a hard-to-guess password (something like BaB?3j5 - but, please, make up your own) and wrapping site-specific information around it.

Now there are often good reasons to use a throw-away password for sites that pointlessly ask for an account to be created, but as soon as these sites have your email address, or any other personal information, you MUST turn your personal security switch on.

Of course, the biggest no-no is the re-use of critical passowrds (such as for banking access) anywhere else at all; those passwords MUST be unique. Make these passwords difficult to remember, in fact jot them down - there doesn't seem to be any spyware that can actually scan the pieces of paper scattered on your desk.

It's often mentioned that passwords themselves are the biggest risk to personal security, however, for as long as the price is right, we will be stuck with them.