We still wonder how people managed to hack into our email accounts–but a recent survey gives us the answer. Is your email password “Spot”? How about “Rover”? Oh, you’re a cat lover? Okay, then I guess “Fluffy.”

According to a survey on the people search website www.yasni.co.uk, 83 percent of British users responding to the survey use their dog’s name, or their own date of birth or maiden name as a password on private email accounts, or even worse, to log onto online banking.

What’s even more surprising is that only 37 percent said they were aware that disclosing this type of information online could be dangerous. Just browse through Facebook or MySpace–see how many phone numbers you find. Way too many. Some people even go so far as to put their personal street addresses. Social networking pages are a treasure trove of personal information, much of which can be used to guess passwords. And so, we add another rule to the password Bible: Never use as a password anything that can be found on your MySpace page. Sixty percent never considered the dangers of putting this information online, and so it’s time to send out the memo and let everybody in the company know.

Although social networking sites typically have the ability to let people change profiles to a “private” setting, the “public” setting is the default, and many users won’t bother changing it, or don’t realize that they can. The danger is clear: Social networking profiles may be mistakenly left public, and hackers can mine those profiles for information for password guessing.