The 25 Most Commonly Used Passwords of 2016

by Harvey Norman · January 18, 2017

A new report from password manager and digital vault company Keep Security has revealed the 25 most commonly used passwords of 2016. Titled ‘What the Most Common Passwords of 2016 List Reveals’, the report highlights just how little thought many of us put into our passwords.

Keeper Software analysed over 10 million passwords that were made public during 2016 due to data breaches, and as you can see from the below list the top 25 most commonly used passwords didn’t prove to be much of a challenge for hackers to crack.

The most commonly used password by a long shot was ‘123456’, accounting for more than 17% of the passwords identified in the report. Five of the remaining top ten most commonly used passwords feature some form of number variation starting with ‘123’, while four of the top ten passwords featured six characters or shorter. Keeper Security notes in the summary of the report that most brute-force cracking software and hardware can unscramble passwords with six characters or less in a matter of seconds.

The summary also notes that the inclusion of passwords like ‘1q2w3e4r’ and ‘123qwe’ indicates that some users are trying to include more complicated word and number combinations to secure their password, but as dictionary-based password crackers are very familiar with sequential key variations these passwords can also be cracked within seconds.

In order to avoid having your password cracked, Keeper Security advises using a variety of characters in a password and to avoid using dictionary terms. The company also recommends using a password manager to keep all accounts as safe possible.

The 25 most commonly used passwords of 2016 are: