A group of hackers calling itself "the D33Ds Company" a list of 453,492 email addresses and passwords in plain text on Thursday, saying they had found them by hacking into a database associated with an unnamed Yahoo service. The passwords weren't all for Yahoo services; they also come from domain names including gmail.com, hotmail.com and aol.com.

A look through the compromised account information says a lot about Web users and security: First of all, a lot of them don't have much of it.

The most common password in the list is "123456," a simple jaunt across the keyboard that was used for 1,673 of the accounts. Another popular option was "##########," which 1,279 users chose. The fact that this password is longer and utilizes non-alphanumeric characters, both of which are common recommendations from password experts, shouldn't really make those 1,279 people rest easier.

Then again, 804 users faced with having to create a username and password for their private information promptly entered "password." More than 500 others started their passwords with "password," giving hackers a nice head start.

However, password hackers have been warned: "donthack," "donthackme," and "dontdoit" are timely reminders to anyone who wants to use a cracking mechanism that runs through the lowercase alphabet. One accountholder was more vehement: "dontdoit!" the password warned.