Quick, what’s the computing world’s worst password?Answer: “password.”Almost as bad is the user’s name, the name of a child or pet, with or without the usual sequence of numbers like 1, 2, 3.Cyber thieves steal billions of dollars a year from personal computer users, businesses and financial institutions, and much of that loss could be prevented, Dr. Tamara Rogers, associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Tennessee State University, told The Rotary Club of McMinnville on Thursday.Huge losses, monetary and emotional, occur in ransomware attacks, she said. It’s an intrusion that locks up data files and often threatens to corrupt them incurably if money is not paid to the anonymous perpetrators.The victim’s choice could be to pay the money and hope the criminals release your computer and restore your files as promised, or suffer the threatened destruction of your business records, cherished photos or the term paper that’s due to be submitted tomorrow morning. “The price could be hundreds of dollars, thousands or millions of dollars,” she said.Last March and April, several large hospitals were hit by ransom attacks, she said, with hackers taking patient medical records and financial ledgers hostage.