Entertainment

The world’s most popular passwords have been revealed. Is yours on the list?

Jan 21, 2016

Have you ever tried to out-trick tricksters and scammers in the hope that choosing an obvious password would be so, well obvious, they would never even think of trying it? Do you make all of your passwords the same so it’s easier to remember them? Well you’re not alone and you should stop it right now!

A list of the world’s most common passwords has been released and it turns out millions of people are using the same basic passwords. Once again, ‘qwertyuiop’ – the top row of keys on a keyboard – and ‘1234567890’ topped the list, with ‘welcome’, ‘abc123’ and ‘password’ coming in close behind.

The list was released by American company, SplashData, who said “lame” passwords were the reason so many people had their computers and private email accounts hacked.

“We have seen an effort by many people to be more secure by adding characters to passwords, but if these longer passwords are based on simple patterns they will put you in just as much risk of having your identity stolen by hackers,” SplashData chief executive Morgan Slain said.

It’s hoped a new push towards fingerprint readers and facial or voice recognition will eliminate the need for passwords all together, but until then we are being urged to put more effort into our passwords.

According to the experts at SplashData, a good password “should include at least 12 characters with combinations of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and special characters — definitely not ‘password,’ ‘football’ or ‘abc123′”.

Take a look at the most common passwords below and be sure to change yours if it’s on the list!