Britons appear to give little thought to the security of their online accounts, according to a new study of the country’s most popular passwords.
While we really should have known better, “Password” itself is the number one choice across the country — with subtle variations like “Password 1” and “Password 123” not far behind.
It replaced last year’s “123,456” as the nation’s most popular website security chocolate teapot, according to an annual study by password management company NordPass.
Other common key combinations that top the list are “qwerty” and “abc123”, and many of us are confident enough in our counting skills to push our passwords all the way up to “12345678”.
Names and sports teams are also popular, with Liverpool outperforming their current Premier League standings in the 2022 crypto chart.
Here are the top 20:
1. Password
2. 123456
3. Guest
4. Liverpool
5. qwerty
6. Arsenal
7. 123456789
8. Password 1
9. 12345
10. 12345678
11. Chelsea
12. Charlie
13. abc123
14. Liverpool 1
15. Parola 12
16. Football
17. Monkey
18. Chocolate
19. Yuantuo 2012
20. Let me
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While this list of passwords might make you shake your head, there are also signs that we’ve gotten smarter about securing our accounts.
NordPass said fewer password samples were available for research this year than in previous years, as more people adopt measures such as multi-factor authentication.
This is when people opt to log into their accounts using authentication apps on their phones, which now often include hardware features like facial recognition, or via text messages and alternate email addresses.
“Passwords are losing their value as the technology becomes more widely adopted,” said Ieva Soblickaite, chief product officer at NordPass.
“Even if you crack the password, you can’t authenticate if the user has MFA enabled.”