Microsoft banning terrible passwords from Hotmail

You don’t normally think of Hotmail as being the most forward looking web application. It’s often accused of being clunky, spammy, just old and weird and stupid. But it’s doing one thing that should make security experts happy: banning lousy passwords. So if you try to use “password” or “123456” or even “ilovecats” as your password, you’ll be asked to pick again. Guessing passwords is still a hugely popular way for bad guys to get into your account and mess with stuff and a really high percentage of people are still using those obvious passwords and assuming nothing bad will happen. The Hotmail ban is for new users but may eventually extend to existing users too.