WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 (UPI) — The SplashData security company has released its Worst Passwords of 2015 list, where the king of the worst passwords — “123456” — continues to reign supreme.
The list is compiled from more than 2 million passwords that were leaked during 2015 and come mostly from North American and Western European users.
“We have seen an effort by many people to be more secure by adding characters to passwords, but if these longer passwords are based on simple patterns they will put you in just as much risk of having your identity stolen by hackers,” Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData, said in a statement.
“As we see on the list, using common sports and pop culture terms is also a bad idea. We hope that with more publicity about how risky it is to use weak passwords, more people will take steps to strengthen their passwords and, most importantly, use different passwords for different websites.”
The Top 10 list includes passwords seen in last year’s entry, with some moving up or down the list. The top two worst passwords have not moved since 2011.
Top 10:
1. 123456 — no change from last year.
2. password — no change.
3. 12345678 — up one spot.
4. qwerty — up one.
5. 12345 — down two.
6. 123456789 — no change.
7. football — up three.
8. 1234 — down one.
9. 1234567 — up two.
10. baseball — down two.
Newcomers to Top 25 Worst Passwords list:
welcome — ranked 11th.
1qaz2wsx — ranked 15th.
princess — ranked 21st.
starwars — ranked 25th.
