According to a recent study by pCloud, most internet users still use predictable passwords that are easy for hackers to find. Here is the list of the worst passwords not to use!
Every day, billions of personal details are shared in forums accessed by hackers. No wonder 90% of Internet users are afraid of having their passwords hacked! Yet – whether through lack of imagination or fear of forgetting them – some use recurring passwords that are far too easy to guess. In addition, they use the same one on several of their accounts at the same time – 5 on average. The problem is that these accounts, filled with personal information, are real gold mines for hackers. Do you know how much you divulge on social media alone? Each time you answer a questionnaire, each time you complete a survey or share a photo of you and your friends… It’s a godsend for hackers! This is why it is essential to use a strong and secure password. But the reality is quite different…
The latest study by pCloud, an online storage and file sharing service for individuals and businesses, reveals alarming figures about online security practices. Indeed, 53% of Internet users trust their memory to remember passwords. Therefore, there will be some that they will remember easily – either common words or information from their personal life, and therefore easy to guess. Worse still, 78% of the infamous Generation Z – people born between 1997 and 2010 – use a single, unique password for all of their online accounts. Social networks are also frequent targets. Hackers want to recover compromising photos – very useful for blackmail – but also all personal data – which can then be sold and used for phishing campaigns. Facebook is the most popular social network for cybercrime, with an average of 90,500 searches per month on how to go about it, followed by Instagram with 60,500 searches and Snapchat with 6,600 searches. And you don’t need to look for lunch at two o’clock to access it, as most passwords are easy to guess…
Ultra-popular simplistic passwords
pCloud has studied the most popular passwords. And the least we can say is that their banality and simplicity are frightening… The most used are 123456, 111111, 123123, azerty and password, but there are also many first names, such as Eve ( used 7,169,777 times), Alex (7,117,656), Anna (6,512,390) and Max (5,670,058). It is often either the first name of the user, or that of one of his relatives. Similarly, certain themes come up very often:
- Food, especially ice (ice cream), tea (tea) and pie (pie);
- Days of the week, especially Friday (157,139 uses), Monday (138,231) and Sunday (128,170);
- The months of the year, especially the months of May (152,218), June (66,097) and August (63,457);
- The seasons, with summer (1,054,215), winter (457,563), spring (347,917) and autumn (151,668);
- The years, especially 2010 (10,000,000), but also 1987 (8,400,000) and 1991 (8,300,000).
If you’re using one of these passwords, it’s time to change it! And, in case of any doubt, check if it is compromised (see our practical sheet).
How to create an effective password?
To be effective, a password must be long – it takes an average of 10 minutes to crack one with less than six characters –, have no meaning and be complex – a combination of words, numbers, capital letters and lowercase, and symbols. Better to be impersonal because with everything you post online and on social media, you could give all the information a hacker needs. From your images, your stories, or even the location and date of publication, it is easy to guess the easy-to-remember information that you use to secure your accounts. It must also be unique for each site, account or service so that if ever a hacker manages to discover one, he cannot use it elsewhere. For more precautions, do not hesitate to change it regularly – and activate double authentication when available.
These criteria may seem easy to apply, but give identifiers that are much more difficult to remember – especially given their quantity. That’s why many people use a password manager to generate good ones and keep them safe. It just remains to hope that it is not hacked too since, due to the sensitive data they contain, these tools are often targeted by hacking attempts.