We all have started understanding the importance of passwords and the necessity of keeping them a secret from others, especially during the coronavirus pandemic because majority of the financial transactions are now carried out online as a measure to keep ourselves safe. Though the Indian government under PM Modi was already encouraging people to go digital, the online transactions increased manifold in the times of lockdown.
Now the password manager NordPass has released an annual report which has revealed some interesting facts about the passwords which were used in the year 2020. NordPass has revealed the 200 worst passwords of 2020 depending on the number of times they have been used, breached and the time taken to crack them. The most common password of the year is 123456, it has been used by millions while it got breached 23 million times and it takes even less than a second to get cracked. The second spot was secured by 123456789 and picture1 got the third position.
What is more surprising is the fact that 123456 was ranked first even in the year 2015 but the second position was taken by password that year. However in 2020, password is at the fourth position.
Check out the list of Top 20:
1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. picture1
4. password
5. 12345678
6. 111111
7. 123123
8. 12345
9. 1234567890
10. senha
11. 1234567
12. qwerty
13. abc123
14. Million2
15. 000000
16. 1234
17. iloveyou
18. aaron431
19. password1
20. qqww1122
There is no denying the fact that almost all of us like to use simple and easy passwords so that we don’t forget them but we should remember that passwords are used for keeping us safe from hackers so it should be something which is not easy to guess or crack.
Some other interesting points which were revealed in the report were – aaron431 is the most common name which is used in the passwords, more than 90K people use it while chocolate was the most common food name used in passwords with more than 21K users. Pokemon is the most common entertainment word which was used by around 37K users and iloveyou may have been at the 17th rank but it was number one in the positive word category.
Try to use strong passwords because now almost every important thing related to our lives is available online.
By the way, is your password in the list?
