That was the not so surprising conclusion of a poll that reveals that the most vulnerable passwords in Internet, which also warned that the codes use names, sports teams and insults are the most popular you could think of.
The poll, made by the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) from the UK, analyzed the passwords from accounts from all over thw world that had been breached.
Various combinations of numbers created the top 10 that “blink182” was the most popular musical artist and “superman” the most common fictional character.
But “123456” was the winner, with more than 23,2 millions of accounts using the easy code to decipher. “123456” was used by 7,7 millions, while “qwerty” and “password” were used by more than 3 millions of accounts.
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Ashley and Michael were the most used names, followed by Danielx Jessica and Charlie.
Liverpool headed the table of football teams of the Premier League that were used as password, along with Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United (“manutd”) that are the next firsts four. Manchester City (“mancity”), for the contrary, ended in the 11st place in the classification table of Premier League passwords.
The Dallas Cowboys (“cowboys1”) was the most name used as a team of the NFL, while the Sunday was the most used day and August, the most common month.
The most common passwords were:
123456123456789
qwerty
111111
12345678
abc123
12345678
password1
12345612
“iloveyou” lost the top 10,while “monkey” and “dragon” made surprising apperances in the top 20. Lot of the users also used key words as an opportunity to make use of a colored variety of bad words.
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The NCSC recommended to use 3 words “random but memorable” on a password, to reduce the risk of an account being hacked.
“The reuse of the passwords is an important risk that can be avoided, anyone must protect their confidential data with something that can be guessed, like their first name, their football team or their favourite band”, said Ian Levy, Technical director of NCSC.
“To use passwords hard to guess is the first solid step and we recommend to combine 3 random words but easy to remember. Be creative and use words easy to remember for you, so the people cannot guess them”, added.