When it comes to generating passwords during a sign-up for a new web account, many people don’t know the implications of using the same password they’ve used for one or more accounts.
Others simply string a slew of alphabets or numbers that anyone can easily guess correctly. Some people use their birth dates, that of their spouse or children.
Guys, it’s 2023 – why are so many of us still using ’123456′ or ‘abcdef’ as our password?
This issue was brought to the fore by NordPass, the password management tool from the team behind NordVPN.
Alongside the independent researchers, NordPass has released its study of the 200 most common passwords used in 2023 – and ‘123456’ is the world’s most common password.
The uncreative combo was counted more than 4.5 million times, with the word ‘admin’ coming in second place.
What does this mean for your cyber security? According to NordPass, it takes hackers less than a second to crack ’123456′ and ‘admin’, so if you’re still using either, it’s seriously time to change!
A third of the world’s most popular passwords consist of purely numerical sequences such as ’123456789′, ‘12345’, and ‘000000’.
Unsurprisingly, ‘password’ also was in the top 10 most common passwords list.
The analysis also found that people use the weakest (and easiest to remember) passwords for their streaming accounts (Netflix), while the strongest letter and number combos are reserved for financial accounts.
Password combinations that people used for their streaming accounts included ‘Netflix’, ‘netflix123’, ‘disney123’ and ‘disney2020’.
And although banking accounts had stronger passwords, ‘visavisa1’ and ‘paypal123’ were still found to be used to protect them.
NordPass warns that as many as 70% of the passwords in this year’s report can be cracked in less than a second.
