Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images The password manager NordPass has once again released its annual list of the world’s most popular passwords and the lack of creativity is just a little disheartening. For the second year in a row, “123456” has been crowned the most common password.
The same numbers topped the chart five out of the six times NordPass has compiled its lists, only to be usurped by the famed “password” in 2022. But once you get past all the QWERTYs, ABCs, and 123s, we get a little insight into what humanity thinks about when creating the line of text that protects their most personal information. Image: NordPass There are those who choose “iloveyou” and those who opt for “fuckyou.” Others have distinct interests, like “pokemon,” “naruto,” “samsung,” and “minecraft.” Many more are just names, like “michelle” or “ashley,” but at least some people make a half-assed attempt at creating a secure “P@ssw0rd” (which still takes less than one second to crack, by the way).
I had a bit of fun looking through the small differences in passwords across different countries, too. The UK’s list, for example, has “liverpool” near the top, while Australia’s has “lizottes” (a restaurant and live music venue that is now apparently called Flamingos Live). Other countries, like Finland and Hungary, have “salasana” and “jelszo” toward the top of their lists both translate to “password.”
To create its list, NordPass said it used a 2.5TB database of “publicly available sources,” some of which were found on the dark web. Many of these passwords take milliseconds for a hacker to figure out, so if your password is on this list, you should probably change it to something a little more creative than “secret.” Or maybe even try passkeys!
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Image: NordPass