We cannot ignore the significance of strong passwords while talking about cybersecurity. Most internet users still use easy-to-guess credentials or reuse passwords, making a hacker’s jobs easy. Adversaries often steal credentials or crack passwords to break into users’ online accounts. Poor password management could result in serious data security issues for both users and organizations.

An analysis from NordPass revealed the most common passwords that people used for a long time. The company listed out the top 200 most common passwords in 2021 among 50 countries and detailed how many times a certain password was used and how long it would take a hacker to crack it.

According to NordPass, the top 10 most used passwords worldwide which could be cracked in less than a minute were:

1. 123456– used 103,170,552 times
2. 123456789– used 46,027,530 times
3. 12345– used 32,955,431 times
4. qwerty– used 22,317,280 times
5. password– used 20,958,297 times
6. 12345678 – used 14,745,771 times
7. 111111 – used 13,354,149 times
8. 123123 – used 10,244,398 times
9. 1234567890 – used 9,646,621 times
10. 1234567 – used 9,396,813 times

Most Affected Countries

Weak passwords will certainly increase the number of data breaches. According to NordPass, the most severely affected countries by data leaks include the U.S., Canada, France, Russia, Germany, Poland, and Australia. While averagely affected countries include Chile, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Finland, Ukraine, Japan, Philippines, and New Zealand. The countries with low data breach impacts were Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, Indonesia, and China.

Also Read: 6 Practices to Strengthen Your Password Hygiene

Other Findings

• Most people love using their own name as a password.
• The dolphin ranked number one among animal-related passwords in many countries.
• Liverpool might be the most popular team globally, judging by how many times it has been used as a password.
• Ferrari and Porsche are the most popular car brands when it comes to bad passwords.
• Swear words are quite often used as passwords. Reportedly, men use swear words as passwords more often than their female counterparts.
• In the U.S., more women (222,287) used “iloveyou” as a password than men (96,785).

Mitigating the Risks via Password Hygiene

We cannot predict data breaches and cyberattacks, but we can strengthen our data security by following certain password hygiene measures. These include:

• Using two-factor or multi-factor authentication
• Using passphrases instead of passwords
• Avoiding the reuse o0066 passwords for business and personal accounts
• Regularly updating passwords

Having a strong password is important for effective data and online security. With the rising concerns over data breaches and hacker intrusions, users must be vigilant and practice necessary password protection measures to avoid cyberthreats.

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