Is Your Password One of the Most Commonly Used?

You know you should pick unique, hard-to-guess passwords.

And use a different one for every site. And update them frequently. However, many of the most commonly used passwords can be cracked in the blink of an eye, which could be leaving your personal information, or your client’s, exposed, according to NordPass. Did you know 84.5% of passwords can cracked in less than a second? That’s an increase of 11.5% from last year.

The top most commonly used passwords are very similar, making it easy for hackers. Hands down, the most commonly used password is 123456, which has dominated the annual list for years. The second most commonly used password? It’s password. Rounding out the top three is 12345. The fourth most commonly used password is 123456789, followed by password1. Completing the top 10 are abc123, 12345678, qwerty, 111111 and 1234567.

Men are more likely to use numbers, while woman are more likely to use phrases like sunshine, iloveyou or princess. Men are more likely than women to use swear words, as well as passwords like Metallica and Slipknot. Other popular bands used as passwords are onedirection and blink-182. The most popular animal used was dolphin and the most popular sports team name used was Liverpool, the soccer team out of England.

Also? Don’t use your own name as your password, michael was the most popular, but a surprising amount of people go that route.

If you use any of these passwords, or your passwords are easy to crack, change them today. Avoid using common words, phrases or number combinations. It’s much better to create a password of random letters, numbers and symbols for each site. There are free and subscription password managers that allow you to just remember one password to access the rest of your passwords.