Technology

The 20 Most Common Passwords in the World 2020

By Anees Shah

Posted on December 6, 2020

Simple sequences of numbers and letters continue to be the most common passwords by users in online services, despite the fact that, because they are so predictable, they compromise the security of Internet users.

For the fifth consecutive year, “123456” is the most common password among Internet users, making it easier for those who are dedicated to stealing identities, hacking accounts and stealing money through scams such as “phishing” and ransomware.

20-most-common-password-in-the-world-2020 — The 20 most common password in the world

Last month, Hakçıl, a Turkish student studying at a university in Cyprus, downloaded and analyzed more than one billion leaked credentials.

According to the study a billion credentials were analyzed, only 168 million were unique password and of those, 7 million passwords were “123456”.

This means that 1 out of 142 passwords included that simple “123456” pattern and it is the most common password in the world for the fifth consecutive year.

Worst of all, the report was made using a web-based data collection technique. This means that all these passwords can be used by hackers to carry out cyber-attacks.

The study’s full result is available on GitHub. These are other data that the study highlighted:

The average password length is 9 characters
Only 12.04% of passwords contain special characters (For example! #? &%.)
28.79% of passwords are only letters
26.16% of passwords are only lowercase
13.37% of passwords are just numbers
34.41% of passwords end with digits, but only 4.522% of passwords start with digits

The problem of this type of passwords, which although they seem complicated, are keys used from one side of the keyboard to the other and also very popular. This makes it easier for hackers or anyone with a little free time and the desire to access other people’s content.

The five most common passwords in 2019 were: “123456”, “123456789”, “qwerty”, “password” and “1234567”, so the pattern repeats itself in 2020 as well.

Also Read: Uses of Internet in Our Daily Life