The most commonly used passwords in 2022 have been revealed by cybersecurity experts at NordPass. As per their analysis, the most widely used password in the UK this year is… “password”, which was used in over 4.9 million instances they discovered worldwide. Across the Atlantic in the US, the most popular password was “guest” followed by "123456", "password", "12345", and "a1b2c3”.
Coming in at number 2 in the UK was last year’s winner, the highly inventive “123456” followed by “guest”. Along with lots of passwords that are easy to remember and quick to type – such as “qwerty” – the UK list also featured a bunch of references to football (that’s soccer for the Americans here).
People’s names were also a common theme, with passwords like “Daniel”, “Thomas”, “Jordan”, “Michael”, “Marina”, and “Jessica” proving to be popular in the English-speaking world.
Nordpass reached their findings by sifting through 3 terabytes of data on cybersecurity incidents with the help of independent researchers specializing in this field. They then broke the data down into numerous verticals, which allowed them to perform a statistical analysis based on variables like location and gender.
The moral of the story is clear: many people are using simple passwords that leave them at higher risk of cybersecurity breaches. If you want your information to stay safe, opt for a long and unique password with numerous different types of characters. Reusing passwords for multiple accounts is also a bad idea.
If you struggle to remember dozens of fiddly passwords, then you can look into using a password manager that will safely keep all your log-ins in a digital vault.
The full top 20 commonly used passwords in the UK this year goes as follows:
- password
- 123456
- guest
- liverpool
- qwerty
- arsenal
- 123456789
- password1
- 12345
- 12345678
- chelsea
- charlie
- abc123
- liverpool1
- Parola12
- football
- monkey
- chocolate
- Yuantuo2012
- letmein
For the US, the top 10 consisted of:
- Guest
- 123456
- password
- 12345
- a1b2c3
- 123456789
- Password1
- 1234
- abc123
- 12345678
10