The most used passwords of 2017 revealed

SplashData has just released their annual list of the most commonly used passwords for the year, based from information gleaned from a number of data breaches.

And those passwords all turned out to be really strong and exceptionally hard to guess! Only kidding, of course. As usual, the same old easy-to-guess passwords appeared on the list as they do every other year.

The problem with these passwords is that they’re incredibly easy to guess. So easy, that even a human could probably get it without the help of automated software.

And speaking of automated software, any software using a brute force attack worth its salt will be programmed to check for these commonly used passwords first, meaning they’ll be successfully unlocking your account in milliseconds.

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The bottom line, of course, is that if you care about the security of your online account, avoid these below passwords like the plague. Not that most will listen, of course. With reasonable certainty, we know that the 2018 list will look incredibly similar to the 2017 list below.

Anyway, to the list. And the top spot hasn’t change now for 4 years, with 123456 retaining its number 1 ranking. As for the rest, there is little change. Password, 12345678, qwerty and 12345 all retain their top 6 spots from last year.

Funnily enough, each year a new Star Wars movie is released, starwars makes an appearance in the list. It was number 25 in 2015 and now rises to 16 in 2017.

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The list can be seen below…

1. 123456 (the “champion” for four in years in a row now)
2. Password (unchanged from 2016)
3. 12345678 (up 1 from 2016)
4. qwerty (consecutive letters on a standard keyboard – up 2 from 2016)
5. 12345 (down 2 from 2016)
6. 123456789 (didn’t appear in 2016 but had the same ranking in 2015)
7. letmein (didn’t appear in 2016 but was number 19 in 2015)
8. 1234567 (unchanged)
9. football (down 4 from 2016)
10. iloveyou (new)
11. admin (up 4 from 2016)
12. welcome (unchanged)
13. monkey (new)
14. login (down 3)
15. abc123 (down 1)
16. starwars (number 25 in 2015, didn’t appear in 2016)
17. 123123 (new)
18. dragon (up 1 from 2016)
19. passw0rd (down 1 from 2016)
20. master (up 1 from 2016)
21. hello (new)
22. freedom (new)
23. whatever (new)
24. qazwsx (new, the two left columns up and down on a standard keyboard)
25. trustno1 (new)

We know it can be frustrating creating a password with digits, letters and symbols etc. in it, but the strongest passwords are the ones that cannot be guessed. This means containing a variety of different characters and that doesn’t appear in any dictionary – and at least 8 characters long!

As for this list, seriously, these passwords are useless, and if anyone with even a little technical know-how wants to break in to your account and you happen to be using one of these passwords, they’re not going to have much trouble.

If you’re using these passwords, change them. As soon as you can.