Do you use one of the most common 200 passwords? A recently released study reveals the most popular choices, and warns hackers won't have a hard time getting into your account with these passwords.
According to a report published this week by password management service NordPass, the most common and easiest password to guess this year is "123456,鈥 followed by 鈥減assword.鈥
Most common passwords on the top 200 list take less than one second to be cracked, NordPass said.
The report compiled the most common passwords around the world. Those behind it say they analyzed data for 30 different countries.
The report shows that most of the were repeated numbers, easy-to-type symbols and words like 鈥渜werty,鈥 and pop culture references like 鈥渟tarwars.鈥
These are the Canada鈥檚 top 10 passwords:
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123456
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password
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54321
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123456789
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guest
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qwerty
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111111
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1234567
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12345
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abc123
WHAT ARE THE REGIONAL DIFFERENCES?
Breaking the data down by country, there are a few regional differences. For example, 鈥済uest鈥 was a common password for Americans while Canadians were more likely to use 鈥123456,鈥 with "guest" lower down on the list. Another example is the word 鈥渉ockey鈥 ranked toward the top of the list as a common Canadian password. 鈥淏aseball鈥 held the same spot in the U.S.
Similarly, in the U.K., people went for 鈥淟iverpool鈥 and 鈥渁rsenal,鈥 while residents of Italy had words like 鈥渃iao鈥 and 鈥渏uventus."
COMMON PASSWORDS BASED ON GENDER
"Password" was the most common password for Canadian women, while men were more likely to use "123456." Both passwords were on both lists, but in a different order.
High on the women's list in Canada were also the passwords "sunshine," "Hudson," "Shannon," and "sparti52," none of which made the men's top 10. The ones that were popular with Canadian men like 鈥123456鈥, 鈥減assword鈥, 12345鈥濃 were all common globally.
PASSWORD THEMES NOTED IN THE REPORT
People were inspired by some events and ceremonies and using the names and symbols as passwords. For example, 鈥淥scars鈥 鈥 referring to the Oscars ceremony -- was used 62,983 times and 鈥渂atman鈥 and 鈥 euphoria鈥 were used 2,562,776 and 53,993 times, respectively, as being inspired by films and shows.
However, the most popular categories of all time were highlighted in the report are food, swear words, fashion brands, sports, movies, artists, cars and video games. As an example, 鈥渇ish鈥 was used 8,574,307 times, the f-word was used 21,223,795 times and 鈥渢iffany鈥 was used 14,767,880 times.
Reporting for this story was paid for through The Afghan Journalists in Residence Project funded by Meta.