If you figured that, by now, people realized that having strong passwords is key to protecting yourself online, well…you would be wrong.
When allowed to set their own passwords, way too many folks don’t give it much thought at all – which is totally evidenced by the most common ones of 2022.
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The list was compiled by cybersecurity experts at NordPass, and I’m sure they were exasperated to learn that, in the U.K, the most popular password is still simply “password.”
Yes, really.
In the US, the top spot went to “guest,” followed closely by “123456,” “password,” “12345,” and “a1b2c3.”
Tricky that last one.
“123456” was number two in the U.K., with “guest” coming in third.
Sports and names were also a common theme.
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U.K.
- password
- 123456
- guest
- liverpool
- qwerty
- arsenal
- 123456789
- password1
- 12345
- 12345678
U.S.
- Guest
- 123456
- password
- 12345
- a1b2c3
- 123456789
- Password1
- 1234
- abc123
- 12345678
The rest of the lists broke down like this:
They compiled their lists using 3 terabytes of data on cybersecurity incidents, then broke it down further to perform an analysis that took things like location and gender into account as well.
Image Credit: iStock
Basically, if you want your information to stay safe, you don’t want to use something very easy to guess, or a word that a bunch of other people use.
It’s also a bad idea to use the same password for more than one account.
A password managers is the easiest way to achieve this and not forget anything in the process.
