May 4th is Star Wars Day and the day before Cinco de Mayo, but it’s also World Password Day. Who comes up with these days?
I would love to sit around a table with a bunch of people and start coming up with random holidays. Give me that job!!!
Let’s focus in on World Password Day. I saw a poll from a website called NordPass. I have never heard of NordPass before and I won’t be using this site frequently but for the case of this article, it’s a big talking point. NordPass did the research and has come up with the top 200 most used passwords in the U.S.
Let’s not dive into all 200 since we will be here all day, let’s focus on the top 20.
Before we get to that, let’s talk about some passwords. Are you like me that has about 5 passwords in rotation all with different numbers or symbols? At our company, we used to have to change our password every 3 months and it was super frustating. You could not use the same password you used in the last 3 changes. Another thing, it would show you how strong your password was. If it was not strong enough, pick a different password!! When did symbols start? Just about every place where you need a password now, you must have a symbol in your password.
- According to NordPass, the most popular password is no longer “123456,” it’s now “guest.”
- Other common passwords include simple combinations of letters, numbers and symbols, like “abc123” and “qwerty.”
- People tend to use cultural experiences, lifestyle trends and recent events to create their passwords. American pro sports team names, like Phillies or Philadelphia Eagles, are also extremely popular passwords.
- The research also finds 83% of the commonly used passwords can be cracked in “less than a second.”
One of my all-time favorite movies came out in 1995 called Hackers, where a group of high schoolers hack random things on the internet. I remember a scene talking about the most commonly used passwords. Back then it was “Love,” “Secret,” “Sex,” and “God.” If you have not seen this movie, it’s pretty good. It stars Angelina Jolie and Matthew Liliard. Here is that scene.
Take a look at the Top 20 Most Common Passwords. #20 is just weird!