“Password”, “123456” and “qwerty”: These are the world’s 25 worst passwords of 2015
If you thought we might have stepped up our collective password game in the light of a slew of high-profile cyber attacks… think again.
Amazingly, “123456” is still the world’s most popular password, followed by meta favourite “password”.
The unfortunate passwords most loved by public and cyber crooks have been uncovered by SplashData’s annual ranking of the world’s worst passwords.
Building on over 2m stolen passwords made public in the last 12 months, the ranking shows how stubbornly unwilling we all are to changing our ways.
Passwords are infamously the weakest link in IT security: ineffective and easily exposed to theft.
Not only do we insist on believing terms like, well, “password” will keep our data safe, but also on using the exact same login everywhere, despite this being first on the list of cybersecurity don’ts.
Tech giants like Google and Yahoo are trialling password-free logins, looking into replacing them with smartphone authentication instead.
But until that becomes commonplace, just make sure to avoid the passwords on this list:
| Rank | Password | Change since 2014 |
| 1 | 123456 | unchanged |
| 2 | password | unchanged |
| 3 | 12345678 | up 1 |
| 4 | qwerty | up 1 |
| 5 | 12345 | down 2 |
| 6 | 123456789 | unchanged |
| 7 | football | up 3 |
| 8 | 1234 | down 1 |
| 9 | 1234567 | up 2 |
| 10 | baseball | down 2 |
| 11 | welcome | new |
| 12 | 1234567890 | new |
| 13 | abc123 | up 1 |
| 14 | 111111 | up 1 |
| 15 | 1qaz2wsx | new |
| 16 | dragon | down 7 |
| 17 | master | up 2 |
| 18 | monkey | down 6 |
| 19 | letmein | down 6 |
| 20 | login | new |
| 21 | princess | new |
| 22 | qwertyuiop | new |
| 23 | solo | new |
| 24 | passw0rd | new |
| 25 | starwars | new |