It’s that time of the year again where we check out the most commonly used passwords that users used to sign into websites and services during the previous year. The list, as always, will make you fear for the cyber security of the general public, and will leave you staggered that people continue to protect the security of their financial and personal lives by choosing such simplistic and easy-to-guess passwords.
Considering it’s 2016 you would have thought that the majority of people dotted around the world would have learned the importance of protecting online accounts and services with a complex, difficult-to-guess password. The list definitely manages to bring out a chuckle due to the fact that people are still continuing to use run-of-the-mill passwords like “password” and “12345“, but it actually highlights a worrying trend that we would have hoped would have started to dissipate by now.
Let’s jump right in and take a look at the top 25 passwords (ranked according to popularity) during 2015:
- 123456
- password
- 12345678
- qwerty
- 12345
- 123456789
- football
- 1234
- 1234567
- baseball
- welcome
- 1234567890
- abc123
- 111111
- 1qaz2wsx
- dragon
- master
- monkey
- letmein
- login
- princess
- qwertyuiop
- solo
- passw0rd
- starwars
It seems that if you’re trying to illegitimately access someone’s online account, and you happen to have that person’s username or email address associated with that account, then there’s a fairly good chance you can just input a sequential array of numbers, or the top line of the keyboard for that matter, to gain access. The list does clearly contain some sequences of numbers and letters that may be difficult to guess, as well as random words that generally aren’t associated with passwords, but they are far from being classified as being strong password choices.
It may be terrifying to see how simple these passwords are, but it’s also very interesting to not only cross-reference the entries against the 2014 list. However, you will also note that certain words like “starwars“, “solo“, and “princess” are being used due to their relevance to popular trends at the time. If you’re signing up for a new account online, or just thinking about changing your password for an existing account, use this as an example of what you should definitely not use.
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