THE worst internet passwords of 2015 have been revealed.
Tech security company Splashdata has compiled its fourth annual list of the 25 most stolen passwords.
It’s 2015 report – compiled from more than 3.3 million leaked passwords from North America and western Europe – shows “123456” still holds the top spot, and has done since 2011.
“Star Wars” featured for the first time, following the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but the vast majority are passwords that computer users – and hackers – seem never to tire of.
Following “123456”, the second most guessed password was “password”.
Coming in third was the scarcely less inventive “12345678”, up one place since last year.
And “qwerty”, “12345” and “12345678” featured in 4th, 6th and 6th place.
The California-based company revealed sports fans have not learned any lessons either, with “football” up three places at number seven and “baseball” in at number ten.
Force
Nor was the Force with those unfortunates who picked “Star Wars” (25th place), “Solo” (23) and Princess (21).
And “Welcome” at number 11, along with “Letmein” at number 19, seem to be inviting thieves to steal valuable personal information.
The word “dragon” (16th place) failed to scare, although it has dropped seven places in popularity since last year.
And “master” inspired little respect, in 17th place.
Even the seemingly complex “1qaz2wsx “ featured as 15th most likely to be guessed.
Other offenders include “login” (20th place), “1234” (8th place) and “abc123” (13th place).
Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData, said: “Passwords based on simple patterns on your keyboard remain popular despite how weak they are.
“Any password using numbers alone should be avoided, especially sequences. As more websites require stronger passwords or combinations of letters and numbers, longer keyboard patterns are becoming common passwords, and they are still not secure.”
The full list is below:
1. 123456 (Unchanged)
2. password (Unchanged)
3. 12345678 (Up 1)
4. qwerty (Up 1)
5. 12345 (Down 2)
6. 123456789 (Unchanged)
7. football (Up 3)
8. 1234 (Down 1)
9. 1234567 (Up 2)
10. baseball (Down 2)
11. welcome (New)
12. 1234567890 (New)
13. abc123 (Up 1)
14. 111111 (Up 1)
15. 1qaz2wsx (New)
16. dragon (Down 7)
17. master (Up 2)
18. monkey (Down 6)
19. letmein (Down 6)
20. login (New)
21. princess (New)
22. qwertyuiop (New)
23. solo (New)
24. passw0rd (New)
25. starwars (New)
