The most apparent passwords you choose for your devices could possibly be making you vulnerable to a data breach. Keeper Security, a password management software firm, analyzed more than 10 million login details leaked online through data breaches that occurred in 2016.
Hopefully You can say You Don’t Use Any Of These Passwords!
Typically the most popular password that continues to be used: “123456,” which the firm’s analysis showed was implemented 17 percent of the time by hacked accounts. The next most typical password was the similar “123456789.”
In fact, easily guessed numbers comprised eight of the top 10 most frequently used passwords. Also, passwords like “18atcskd2w” and “3rjs1la7qe” landed on the list. Those could seem unusual but these are typically used by bots when putting together dummy email accounts for spam and phishing attacks.
The firm did note one piece of progress on the password front: The word “password” finally dropped from fifth position on the list to now eighth.
Seven of the top 15 passwords on the lists consist of six or fewer characters, which can make them more vulnerable to hackers, the company notes.
“Email providers could do everyone a big favor by flagging this kind of repetition and reporting the guilty parties,” Keeper’s researchers note.
Here were essentially the most commonly used passwords in 2016, as outlined by Keeper Security. If you discover one of your passwords on the list, you’ll want to go change your password now!
1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. qwerty
4. 12345678
5. 111111
6. 1234567890
7. 1234567
8. password
9. 123123
10. 987654321
11.qwertyuiop
12. mynoob
13. 123321
14. 666666
15. 18atcskd2w
16. 7777777
17. 1q2w3e4r
18.654321
19. 555555
20. 3rjs1la7qe
Have some advice you would like to share with us? Please let us know what you have done to further protect yourself, software that you use, or the ways you keep your passwords secured. To comment simply click here
