The most popular online passwords – is yours on the list?
Some of the world’s most popular passwords have been revealed – and while some of them are obvious and predictable, others – such as “ihateyou” and “f***off” – are a little more surprising.
In a joint study by Dashlane and Virginia Tech, the project analysed 61.5 million passwords from 107 online services over eight years to look for trends.
Dashlane used the data to discover password patterns and found popular passwords followed a few common themes including love, brands, movies, music and sports teams.
The top passwords in popular culture were superman, pokemon, slipknot and starwars, while brand-related passwords included ‘cocacola’, ‘mustang’ and ‘myspace’.
Passwords linked to emotion also rated highly, with phrases ‘iloveyou’, ‘lovelove’, ‘f***you’ and ‘a**hole’.
Dr Gang Wang, an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech’s Department of Computer Science, said reusing the same word or phrase across multiple passwords is dangerous.
“It is difficult for humans to memorize unique passwords for the 150+ accounts the average person has,” Dr Wang said.
“Inevitably, people reuse or slightly modify them, which is a dangerous practice. This danger has been amplified by the massive data breaches which have given attackers more effective tools for guessing and hacking passwords.”
Another bad habit known as ‘password walking’ involves using letters, numbers or symbols that are adjacent to each other on the keyboard.
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According to Dashlane, these passwords are relatively simple to crack and include popular codes ‘qwerty’ and ‘123456’.
Other ‘walking’ combinations that are frequently used include ‘1q2w3e4r’, ‘1qaz2wsx’ and ‘1qazxsw2’.
To ensure your accounts are as protected as possible, Dashlane advises using a unique password for every account.
Passwords should have at least eight characters and have a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Top 10 passwords related to love/hate
iloveyou
f*ckyou
a**hole
f*ckoff
iloveme
trustno1
beautiful
ihateyou
bullsh*t
lovelove
Top 10 passwords related to brands
myspace
mustang
linkedin
ferrari
playboy
mercedes
cocacola
snickers
corvette
skittles
Top 10 passwords related to popular culture
superman
pokemon
slipknot
starwars
metallica
nirvana
blink182
spiderman
greenday
rockstar
