Turns out you don’t need to be Alan Turing to crack most people’s online accounts.
SplashData has revealed its annual countdown of the most popular passwords of the year.
The company compiles the list by analysing millions of stolen logins made public throughout 2017.
And unfortunately, it appears the standard of cybersecurity hasn’t dramatically altered from previous lists published in 2014, 2015, or 2016.
The two most popular choices, based on the login information published via online hacks, are either “123456” and “password”.
The ever-so-slightly-more-secure “12345678” is up one place, compared to last year.
Meanwhile, “letmein” and “monkey” are new entries this year.
The return of Star Wars to the local multiplex also appears to have had an effect on the most popular passwords of the year, with the word “starwars” appearing on the list for the first time.
SplashData CEO Morgan Slain said: “Unfortunately, while the newest episode may be a fantastic addition to the Star Wars franchise, ‘starwars’ is a dangerous password to use.
“Hackers are using common terms from pop culture and sports to break into accounts online because they know many people are using those easy-to-remember words.”
According to SplashData, the majority of the data analysed to compile this year’s list originated from North America and Western Europe.
It did not include security breaches for either adult websites or the massive Yahoo hack.
Here’s the full list –
If you have spotted your password amongst the SplashData list above – change it.
Always create a unique password for every one of your online accounts.
For example, take the first letter of each word in your favourite song lyric, phrase or poem – and use those letters, which appear like a random jumble, as your password.
A password manager is another way to generate and securely store unique passwords with letters, symbols and numbers.