The 25 Most Commonly Used Passwords Of 2015 Will Depress You

It would appear that people still suck at creating passwords. If you look at this annual list of the top 25 most commonly used passwords from SplashData, you’ll see what I mean.

Photo by Sergay Nivens

Every year, security application and services company SplashData complies a list of the millions of stolen passwords that were made public over a 12-month period. According to the data collected, “123456” and “password” were the most popular passwords used last year. This remains unchanged from 2014.

Going down the list will make you lose faith in humanity. You’d think that after years of being told not to use common words or sequential characters as passwords that most people would get the message that these types of passcodes makes them more vulnerable to hacking and identity theft.

Here’s the full list:

1. 123456 (Unchanged)

2. password (Unchanged)

3. 12345678 (Up 1)

4. qwerty (Up 1)

5. 12345 (Down 2)

6. 123456789 (Unchanged)

7. football (Up 3)

8. 1234 (Down 1)

9. 1234567 (Up 2)

10. baseball (Down 2)

11. welcome (New)

12. 1234567890 (New)

13. abc123 (Up 1)

14. 111111 (Up 1)

15. 1qaz2wsx (New)

16. dragon (Down 7)

17. master (Up 2)

18. monkey (Down 6)

19. letmein (Down 6)

20. login (New)

21. princess (New)

22. qwertyuiop (New)

23. solo (New)

24. passw0rd (New)

25. starwars (New)

SplashData has some advice for creating safer passwords, with the most obvious tip being to avoid all of the passwords on the list:

  • Use passwords or passphrases of 12 characters or more with mixed types of characters
  • Avoid using the same password over and over again on different websites
  • Use a password manager to organise and protect passwords, generate random passwords and automatically log into websites. (See Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Password Managers, Compared).

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