Top 10 Worst Passwords in 2016

Lots of people can’t really be bothered with passwords – they make passwords as easy as possible for them to remember, at the price of security.

I mean, honestly, who likes to memorise 50 different passwords for different services? Or when you are told that you cannot use the same password twice, or that you must have a few non-alphanumeric characters in your passwords?

SplashData, provider of password management applications TeamsID, Gpass, and SplashID, has released its “Worst passwords in 2016” list which is based on an evaluation over 5 million leaked emails and passwords in 2016 (mostly from users within the North America and Western Europe region).

The top worst passwords, as you may have guessed, continue to be…..hold your breath…. “123456” and “password”.

If you instantly think “Oh, that’s my password to log in to X”, then you are not alone. These are most commonly used passwords and you need to stop doing whatever you are doing now and change your passwords. Like, NOW.

Hackers and criminals often use these commonly used passwords as a starting point to break through your emails, Facebook logins, and other things. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how devastating it would be when someone else has access to your accounts.

According SplashData sixth annual Worst Passwords report, three variations of “password” are quite popular too: “passw0rd” and “password1”.

Why would SplashData releases these top worst passwords of the year then? They are hoping that this would make people aware to take security seriously and take a step to strengthen their passwords.

SplashData’s Top 10 Worst Passwords of 2016:

So what can you do then? If you can’t remember 50 different passwords with 8-12 random characters (who can?), you should start using a secure password manager such as SplashID, LastPass, or 1Password (which is what I’m using at the moment).

If you are interested, here is the full infographic that shows the Top 25 worst passwords in 2016 (from TeamsID page):