And the answer is: yes.  All the time, all over the world, people are using the same passwords. 

NordPass, an online password management service, recently released their annual report on the 200 most common passwords.  Compliled with a team of independent cybersecurity researchers, and spanning 4TB of password data from over 50 countries, it proves that folks everywhere have similar ideas about passwords.

Unfortunately, that also means that most of these passwords can be cracked in less than a second.

Are any of your passwords on the list?

The top ten in the United States are mostly numerical, variations on 123456, or that old standard password.  Dig a little deeper, and sports (baseball, football) and first names and nicknames start popping up (michael, princess, sunshine, ashley).

It's really pretty interesting, to see what passwords are common in different areas, you can peruse NordPass' full report here.

So, what were the top ten most used (and easiest to crack) passwords in the US last year?

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345
4. 1234556789
5. password1
6. abc123
7. 12345678
8. qwerty
9. 111111
10. 123456

Please, if your passwords look anything like this, change them immediately!

We get it, the average person can have a hundred or more passwords to try to remember, and it can easily get overwhelming. It is imperative, though, to have a different, strong password for every account. (Quick aside: Curious what makes a password "strong"?  Read our follow up post, Bad Passwords Part 2 here!)  To keep track of them all, don't keep them on sticky notes on your monitor, or in a text file on your computer. The most secure way is with a password manager. Password management programs remember all your passwords for you, so you only need to remember one - it's own password.  Password management is a topic for a whole future blog post, but you should know: each of the major web browsers, like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, all have basic password management built in.

If you want additional features and protection, you can use a third-party app like 1Password, LastPass, or NordPass.  Any of these options is a more secure choice than that ancient piece of paper folded up in my your wallet.  It's probably all out of date, anyway.

(I really need to get rid of that thing.)

As always, if you have any questions or concerns about cybersecurity

and/or password management, give us a ring!