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Topics: Technology, News
Chelsea Connor
When you think of the most obvious, default password, what comes to mind? ‘Admin1’? ‘Password1’ perhaps?
Think of what your overly-trusting Nan uses for her hotmail.
Well, the Cybernews Investigation Team have released ‘the most used’ passwords that are still in use - and some of them are surprisingly archaic.
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It seems like some lucky buns out there haven’t been hacked and still feel comfortable putting a ‘1, 2 and 3’ as a number in their password (if it works, it works!)
In total, 15,212,645,925 passwords were gathered, of which 2,217,015,490 were unique.
It’s also been noted that the most common passwords usually don’t reach the recommended eight-character length.
Jason Wise, a privacy expert explained: “‘Considering how many different passwords you need to use daily, it’s understandable to use simple passwords or the same one for everything.”
‘If you are using one of the most common passwords in 2024 or any variant mentioned in this guide, it’s time to change it,’ he added.
The tech team also revealed what people regularly choose for their passwords, with some of the most popular being favourite sports teams, cities, food, and even curse words.'
As a way to protect yourself from hackers, experts advise not to use anything pertaining to yourself, your age etc. They also recommend ‘using a password generator. These tools can create unique passwords of 12 characters that include numbers, special characters, and both lower and uppercase letters.
According to a report by Scientific American, it is 62 trillion times harder to crack a password with 12 characters than a password with six characters.
Even with all of the necessary steps, the experts warn that passwords aren’t enough to stop people from hacking into your accounts, and an extra layer of protection should be added to your accounts, such as a multi-factor authentication.
A list was compiled of the most used passwords of this year, and it seems not much has changed since 2023, with most of the go-to passwords still being used daily. The ten most common passwords that were used this year may surprise you (they also might really, really not though) The list looks like:
1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. qwerty
4. password
5. 12345
6. qwerty123
7. 1q2w3e
8. 12345678
9. 111111
10.1234567890
According to Security.org, 61% of users impacted by password hacking admitted to having passwords shorter than eight characters in 2023. Additionally, only 64% of the passwords were 8 to 11 characters long.