For the past few years, SplashData has shared what the worst passwords of the year have been. You would think that with such information being made available, and all the security breaches we’ve seen, that users would be more diligent about selecting stronger passwords to protect their accounts.Unfortunately it seems that all this information hasn’t really changed the password choices of users because according to the latest data, terrible passwords such as “123456” and “password” continue to remain in first and second place respectively for the fifth year in a row. In fact the majority of the top 10 worst passwords contain numbers in sequential order, ranging from “123456” to “123456789” to “11111” and so on.
According to Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData, “Our hope by publishing this list each year is to convince people to take steps to protect themselves online. It’s a real head-scratcher that with all the risks known, and with so many highly publicized hacks such as Marriott and the National Republican Congressional Committee, that people continue putting themselves at such risk year-after-year.”
For those who need help creating a strong password, you can check out our guide here. Alternatively you can also use password managers such as 1Password and LastPass, both of which comes with a feature that helps users generate strong passwords. These password managers can also help users autofill logins on desktop and mobile which also takes the hassle out of remembering them.