When thousands of intimate images of Hollywood actresses were leaked online, many people pointed fingers at the weak password security the stars had been using. But instead of reminding us all of the importance of good online safety, the iCloud burst of naked photos is now just a footnote in the history of 2014, with most of us still failing to get to grips with good password control.

How else can we explain 53 Irish homes unwittingly broadcasting to the world, among thousands of webcams cracked by Russian hackers? The group says they did it to prove a point about the lax attitude we’re all guilty of when it comes to setting up smart passwords.

Ireland AM, TV3’s flagship show, even succumbed to a Twitter hacking on Wednesday evening, sending out an anti-Fine Gael message to its 30,000 followers. While Alan Hughes’ political ideologies are unknown, his tenure as a seasoned broadcaster mean the tweet was almost certainly the result of poor password control, and led to the show freezing its account:

Clarification: Previous tweet addressing Fine Gael is not an Ireland AM opinion. Our Account will be frozen while we address this. Apologies

— Ireland AM (@IrelandAMTV3) November 19, 2014

It isn’t all that hard to create a complex password that resists persistent hacking attempts; we’ve all heard countless times to use different characters (!/@/#/%), to update them regularly, and to not use the same password for every different online account.

But it seems that Twitter hacks, webcam broadcasts and celebrity leaks still won’t wake us up to good password control.

Newstalk wants to know how serious you are about online passwords, so please take the time to answer our poll?

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