It’s something that we’re all regularly warned about, but it seems that many people are still using passwords that are very easy to guess.
The National Cyber Security Centre has revealed the most common and most hacked passwords, in the hopes of reminding people of the risks of using easy-to-guess codes.
Unsurprisingly, many of the most common passwords feature sequences of numbers, including ‘123456’, ‘123456789’ and ‘1111111’.
The statistics also revealed that 3.6 million people still use ‘password’ as their password, while 3.8 million use ‘qwerty’.
Several names were popular choices for passwords, with Ashley topping the list, followed by Michael, Daniel, Jessica and Charlie.
And it seems that many football fans like to use their club’s name as their password, with 280,723 using ‘liverpool’, 216,677 ‘chelsea’, and 179,095 ‘arsenal’.
Fictional characters topping the list include ‘superman’, ‘naruto’, ‘tigger’, ‘pokemon’ and ‘batman’, while several musicians were also used as passwords, including ‘blink182’, ‘50cent’, ‘eminem’, ‘metallica’ and ‘slipknot.’
Based on the findings, the National Cyber Security Centre is urging Brits to be more vigilant about their passwords.
To protect your accounts, it advises:
- Use a unique and separate password for your email.
- Use three random words to create a strong and memorable password.
- Store your passwords somewhere safe: save to your browser or use a password manager.
- Add extra security to important online accounts: turn on two-factor authentication.
Most used passwords:
- 123456 (23.2million)
- 123456789 (7.7million)
- qwerty (3.8million)
- password (3.6million)
- 1111111 (3.1million)
Names:
- Ashley (432, 276)
- Michael (425, 291)
- Daniel (368, 227)
- Jessica (324, 125)
- Charlie (308, 939)
Fictional characters:
- superman (333,139)
- naruto (242,749)
- tigger (237,290)
- pokemon (226,947)
- batman (203,116)
Premier League football teams:
- liverpool (280,723)
- chelsea (216,677)
-arsenal (179,095)
- manutd (59,440)
- everton (46,619)
Musicians:
- blink182 (285,706)
- 50cent (191,153)
- eminem (167,983)
- metallica (140,841)
- slipknot (140,833)
