A lot of people have terrible passwords, with ‘123456’ and ‘password’ maintaining their place atop a list of truly dreadful choices for 2014.
Everybody nowadays seems to have an opinion on user data and online privacy but the effort being put in by a huge section of humanity online appears to be rather lacking when it comes to common sense.
SplashData announced its fourth annual list of the 25 most common passwords found on the internet. After the leading duo comes a slightly shortened ‘12345’ up a massive 17 places on 2013, with the creatively lengthened ‘12345678’ and ‘qwerty’ rounding out the top 5.
Fire-breathing security
Somehow ‘dragon’ is in the top 10, and I’m at a loss to explain why such a random, fictional species is so present as so many people’s password.
As a way of proving just how foolish people are when it comes to online passwords, chat-show host Jimmy Kimmel’s recent LieWitness News segment, where he asked randomers on the street what their password is, was incredibly effective in revealing what, surely, nobody should ever want to reveal.
A massive 2.2pc of online passwords are represented on the entire list, which numbers 100, and that’s actually the lowest percentage since the rankings began.
The list is compiled from the 3.3m passwords that were leaked in some way or other in the past year, and largely represent Europe and North America.
Superheroes seem to be in vogue, with both ‘Superman’ and ‘Batman’ new entries on the list. ‘Baseball’ and ‘Football’ are quite popular, with ‘111111’ down eight places to 15th. The top 25 are as follows:
1 123456 (Unchanged from 2013)
2 password (Unchanged)
3 12345 (Up 17)
4 12345678 (Down 1)
5 qwerty (Down 1)
6 1234567890 (Unchanged)
7 1234 (Up 9)
8 baseball (New)
9 dragon (New)
10 football (New)
11 1234567 (Down 4)
12 monkey (Up 5)
13 letmein (Up 1)
14 abc123 (Down 9)
15 111111 (Down 8)
16 mustang (New)
17 access (New)
18 shadow (Unchanged)
19 master (New)
20 michael (New)
21 superman (New)
22 696969 (New)
23 123123 (Down 12)
24 batman (New)
25 trustno1 (Down 1)
Dragon image via Shutterstock
