The top ten worst passwords are revealed. See if yours is on the list

In the technological age, various network passwords have become an important part of people's lives, but people's passwords still have many loopholes. According to a survey by SplashData, a US cybersecurity company, many people still use easily guessed characters and numbers to protect sensitive information. For example, the most popular password last year was "123456".

Worst commonality: mostly numbers

According to data obtained by SplashData, in addition to the top-ranked "123456", the second most used password is "password", as well as "12345", "12345678" and "qwerty". In the past few years, "123456" and "password" have ranked in the top two of the most common passwords.

The sixth and seventh most common passwords in 2014 were also similar strings of numbers, followed by "baseball," "football," and "dragon." However, looking at the top 10, the most popular passwords are mostly the same, only the order has changed.

It is reported that this is the fourth consecutive year that SplashData has focused on the use of passwords by users around the world. In 2014, the company collected more than 3.3 million leaked passwords to reach the above conclusion, but these passwords mainly came from users in North America and Western Europe.

Using a password manager is safer

The company also does not recommend users to use birthdays, birthday years and names as passwords. Among the top 50 passwords, common European and American names such as "Michael", "Jennifer", "Thomas" and "Jordan" are prominently listed.

"Despite their poor strength, simple patterns on the keyboard are still very popular," said Morgan Slane, president of the company. "As more sites require users to use stronger passwords, longer patterns are becoming common, but they are just as insecure."

The company also recommends that users use password managers, which are apps that generate random passwords that are more secure than passwords that users come up with themselves.

China's Top Ten Worst Passwords

Before SplashData announced the world's worst passwords, a well-known domestic cybersecurity company also released a password study.

According to the study, the top ten passwords most commonly used by Chinese users are also extremely simple - they are mainly derived from the Chinese phonetic variants of their names.

In addition, Chinese users also like to use birthdays and mobile phone numbers as passwords. These simple passwords are extremely risky and can be easily cracked by hackers.

abc123

123456

xiaoming

12345678

iloveyou

admin

qq123456

taobao

root

wang1234

Shocking: Russian hacker group stole 1.2 billion user passwords

Since users usually set the same password for different accounts, password leaks occurred frequently in 2014.

According to US media reports, in August last year, a Russian hacker group had stolen the usernames and passwords of 1.2 billion users and more than 500 million email addresses. This is the largest Internet information theft case in history. The well-known developer community Mozilla also publicly admitted last year that a failed data "cleaning" operation caused a database failure, resulting in the leakage of 76,000 developers' email addresses and about 4,000 encrypted passwords.

Recently, a report released by domestic security software also pointed out that both website server backdoors and website loopholes can be easily exploited by hackers to steal bank card account passwords or implant Trojans for damage.

Expert advice: Passwords should be changed frequently, 12 digits is the most suitable

Hackers can easily gain control of multiple accounts by repeatedly trying common passwords. Therefore, American cybersecurity expert Simon Elson provides some suggestions on password setting, such as changing passwords regularly; choosing different types of characters when setting passwords, including numbers, letters, and special characters; using spaces or underscores for independent short words; using online password managers to monitor different accounts; not saving all passwords in one place, etc.

In addition, although longer passwords improve security, they are not easy to remember. Taking into account factors such as security and convenience, what is the most appropriate length for a password? A study by the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States showed that a 12-digit password is more appropriate - the researchers assumed that a skilled hacker could generate one trillion password combinations per second using a computer. In this case, if a user uses a 12-digit password, with the current level of technology, it will take a hacker 17,134 years to crack it.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.