Almost 5 million people have a common password that can be hacked in 1 second: check yours

Despite the fact that we've been using the Internet for decades and children are taught computer literacy even before they start school, the way most people set passwords still shocks experts. A recent study has shown that an incredible number of people use the same painfully obvious password, which puts their data at great risk.

The study was conducted by independent cybersecurity experts together with NordPass, a company that develops the password manager of the same name, and published it on the company's blog. They analyzed 3 terabytes of data from people in 30 countries and compiled a list of the 200 most common, and therefore dangerous, passwords.

The first place in the experts' anti-rating was taken by the word "password". On websites and services, it is often used as the default password entry box, and users can't think of anything better than to simply repeat this conventional example. This is what 4.93 million users around the world do.

The second position was taken by another "classics" - "123456". It is still used by 1.52 million people.

A little more fancy, although in fact the same bad password - "123456789" - is used by a little more than 413,000 users. And this is the third position.

The researchers point out that it would take hackers less than 1 second to crack these three passwords.

The fourth position was taken by the password "guest". It is used by almost 376.5 thousand people. Despite the fact that it is so popular, hackers can crack it in 10 seconds.

The fifth place goes to the "qwerty" variant. Almost 310 thousand people still use the letters on the left side of the top line of the English keyboard layout to protect their data. It also takes less than a second to crack it.

The sixth place was taken by another numerical string - "12345678" (almost 285 thousand users). And the seventh position was taken by "111111". It is popular with almost 230 thousand people. Next is another numeric string, but shorter - "12345", with 188 users. All of these passwords can be cracked in less than a second as well.

At the 9th position, the experts listed the password "col123456". This somewhat fancy combination is used by 140.5 thousand people. And it's the most difficult password in the top ten worst passwords. It takes a hacker 11 seconds to crack it.

The top ten is rounded out by "123123", which is used by almost 128 thousand users. Again, it takes less than a second to crack.

Experts also named the names of fashion brands, swear words, sports teams, movies, video games, car brands, food products, and artists' names - mostly musicians - as bad passwords. All of them should be avoided.

The experts also gave their advice on how to create a good password:

• It should be long and complex: contain at least 12 characters and include both uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols;
• the same password should not be repeated on several accounts;
• the password should be changed from time to time, and preferably to a more complex one.