With the ever-growing number of data breaches, taking care of your passwords is as essential as ever. One of the critical elements of a strong password is its uniqueness. Therefore, today we present the most commonly used passwords and phrases used by people worldwide.
It is no secret that few users use their minds to create a unique password.
The explanation is pretty apparent. One person has lots of accounts, several email addresses (for essential business, spam, etc.). Why should a user bother to create a new password and remember them for all their different accounts? If you do not remember the password to your account or at a place where you can not access your logs where you have written your passwords, what will you do then?
You don’t need to remember all your passwords. Password Managers are already there in the market. They are helping you to create and remember all of your passwords with just a single click. If you are not comfortable using software to create a strong password for you, you can always invent some Password Formation methods for each site.
We all are human beings and have something similar in behavior; the way of thinking. Creating a new password, we have identical clues and follow similar leads. Here is a typical plan of password generating for the majority of the users.
- The first thing that comes to most users’ minds is to use our pets’ names, car models, or the word “password.” Indeed, you are the only person with a black Dodge Challenger 1970, a dog called Simba, and a Password “password.”
- The combination of the numbers such as – 12345, 123456789, 987654321, etc.
- The name of your Favorite movie “Venom” or a book title “The Great Gatsby.” The name of the country “Britain” or color “Orange”- a frequent phenomenon.
As per the statistics, women suffer from hacking more often than men. Women tend to use simple vocabulary words that make them more vulnerable.
The Most Used Word Patterns In Passwords
Different users use different word patterns to create their passwords. We would be looking at what are the most common word patterns people use worldwide:
Worldwide Trends
The most popular choice password with worldwide users is “password.” Also, the various variations in different countries, such as “passwort” (German) or “motdepasse” (French), were found in the top 20 for their country.
Some of the other famous worldwide are words like “Angel,” “Dragon,” and “Superman.” These terms are culturally relevant in some countries.
European users prefer using first names as passwords. At the same time, Russian users differ from the other populations. They usually prefer keyboard patterns over meaningful words, even when using alpha-numeric Characters as passwords.
First Names In Passwords
The most common password creation technique uses your first name inside a password. The first names included in the email address – 4.19% of worldwide users do this. In contrast, Italians (4.13%), Russians (3.79%), and Germans(2.51%) are the global population that uses easy-to-hack passwords and exposes themselves to cyber-criminals.
The most used name is “Eva,” but it is slightly ahead of “Alex,” with just about 50,000 instances less than “Eva.” The third-place goes to “Anna” but with a considerable drop of instances, and it consistently tapers down till we reach “Daniel” at #10.
Frequently Used Years
One of the most common Password Patterns is to use your “Birth Year,” “Birth Month,” or “Age” at the end of a password.
One of the most popular years was “2010,” with about 10 million versions of this specific year used in passwords. “1987” was the second-most famous year used with about 8.4 million, while “1991” was third with about 8.3 million.
First Names including 123 Passwords
“123” pattern added before or after the first name in your email addresses was observed in 0.03% of the world population’s passwords. Also, adding random numeric patterns to passwords is a great strategy. But using a simple password pattern like “123” or “987” is far too familiar.
Famous People, Brands & Pop Culture Figures
While analyzing millions of users worldwide, we frequently found references to pop culture and historical figures. It is either a part of the password or an exact match. We have found out that there was a massive influence of cultural references while creating passwords.
“Christ” and “Jesus” led the list with 7,432 and 7,414 respective mentions; not too far away were some brands like “Google” (7,057 mentions). “Apple” (6,240 mentions), and “Samsung” (2,866 mentions). The iconic TV series “Friends” was another top choice with 4,289 mentions, while “Starwars” was mentioned 2,237 times. The Famous Sports Figure “Ronaldo” was also mentioned as the password 1,265 times.
The Worst Passwords
Here are the worst ten passwords of 2020. The list below defines how many times a password has been used, exposed and how much time it takes to crack it.
| Password | MD5 | Number Of Users | Time To Crack | Times Exposed |
| 0123456 | f2080818e53bb0bbd5c4af6c491b8c04 | 19,190 | Less than one second | 23,597,311 |
| 0123456789 | 781e5e245d69b566979b86e28d23f2c7 | 37,280 | Three Seconds | 7,870,694 |
| qwerty | d8578edf8458ce06fbc5bb76a58c5ca4 | 156,765 | Less than one second | 3,946,737 |
| password | 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 | 360,467 | About a minute and Thirteen Seconds | 3,759,315 |
| 111111 | 96e79218965eb72c92a549dd5a330112 | 230,507 | Less than one second | 3,124,368 |
| 12345678 | 6e5f603247a61d89625127f3f67836a7 | 322,187 | Less than one second | 2,944,615 |
| abc123 | e99a18c428cb38d5f260853678922e03 | 151,804 | Less than one second | 2,877,689 |
| password1 | 7c6a180b36896a0a8c02787eeafb0e4c | 87,556 | About 9 Hours, and 56 Minutes | 2,418,984 |
| iloveyou | f25a2fc72690b780b2a14e140ef6a9e0 | 106,327 | About a minute and thirteen second | 1,645,337 |
| 1q2w3e4r5t | 97db1846570837fce6ff62a408f1c26a | 28,092 | About 14 days and 21 hours | 1,199,289 |
Tips For Improving Password Strength
Creating a unique, hard-to-guess, and secure password has become necessary for people in 2021 due to the increase in hacking. Below are a few essential tips for improving your password strength:
- Do not reuse passwords for any account.
- Use a password that is longer than eight characters.
- Don’t use any words from your email address as a part of your password.
- Always includes uppercase and lowercase alpha-numeric characters and symbols while creating a password.
- Do not include common names, phrases, cultural references, or common cities.
Conclusion
The easiest way to improve your password strength while not remembering all those unique passwords is using a Password Management Application. A good Password Manager generates a unique password with just a single click and offers you to auto-fill your credentials once stored in the Password Manager Library.
Moreover, the Best Password Managers allow you to secure your library with a unique Master Password and use AES 256-bit military-grade encryption to further enhance your security. Towards the end, we can hope that you won’t now make any mistakes while creating your password, and your passwords won’t be anyone from the above list.
