It’s a scary world out there. Just ask the application developers working on Yahoo! Voices. So it’s only fitting that this Friday the 13th, we look at some of the more frightening, and ridiculous aspects of data security.

1. Do you know why the word, “password” is an awful password? If you don’t, then you probably ought to change your Yahoo! login credentials right now. Other passwords that apparently suck according to CNet include ninja, welcome and baseball. Coincidentally, baseball is an awful sport too.

1. Network World today just posted a fairly exhaustive list of 2012 data breaches through June. Lots of passwords, social security numbers, student IDs, personal information and even product source code hacked and leaked. Some very rudimentary hashing, but not much else, was used to protect this data.

1. Not necessarily data security related, but did you know today is already the third Friday the 13th of 2012? Apparently this happens every 25-30 years or so. Was big data used to calculate the frequency of this odd occurrence? Nope. Just some guy looking at a calendar.

1. What price do you place on your privacy? That’s not really a hypothetical question anymore according to the PC World article titled, the booming market for your online identity. There are a lot of fingers in the big data cookie jar right now, so it’s more important than ever to ensure data is encrypted and protected from unauthorized access.

1. Finally, I’m picking on Yahoo a little bit today, mostly because I like writing the word, Yahoo nearly as much as I like saying it. But seriously, why would you store user passwords in plain text? Consider encryption a last line of defense and make sure if you're storing passwords that they're hashed and salted. The scariest thing about this story to me is the thoughtfulness of the hackers, who apparently used some restraint in their attack on Yahoo. It sounds like this could have been much worse.