World’s most popular passwords that you should stop using immediately
One of the worst things about living in the 21st century has to be passwords.
Remembering the sheer amount of them and their different combinations is oftentimes ridiculous.
In fact, I'm convinced our brains were never designed to recall so many passwords.
And the frustration of having to reset a password, only to be told your 'new password can't be the same as the old one'...infuriating.
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However, it's so easy for hackers to steal our personal information nowadays, which is why a strong password, no matter how annoying, is important.
We're told passwords should include both upper and lowercase as well as special characters like punctuation marks to make them harder to guess.
Despite this, people in the US are still using ridiculously easy passwords - as NordPass and NordStellar have found.
Password manager NordPass revealed the top ten passwords used in America and quite frankly, they're embarrassing.
Avoid obvious numerical passwords
Topping the list at number one - for the second year in a row - is '123456.'
Come on, we can do better than that!
The second most-popular password is very similar, with '123456789' taking the spot. This also happens to be the most common password in the world.
Coming in third is another set of numbers: '12345678'.
This is concerning, especially when you consider a simple eight-character password made up of only of numbers can be cracked in under 40 seconds by trial and error guessing.
In comparison, an eight-character password, which includes upper and lowercase letters, as well as numbers, could take years to decode.
Worth bearing in mind as we see what else made the list...
Coming fourth place in an absolute classic: 'password.' Then there's 'qwerty123,''qwerty1' and '111111.'
The final three places go to '12345,' 'secret' and '123123.'
With more and more data breaches, even passwords you'd consider secure could be easily decoded.
Top tips for selecting a new password
So the next time you reset your password, maybe think twice about reusing that old one...
Microsoft recommends the usual advice - using a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.
You should avoid using words that can be found in a dictionary - which rules out a lot - or the name of a person, character, product, or organization.
Your new password should also be 'significantly different' from your previous passwords.
If you want to test out how secure your password is, sites like How Secure Is My Password can help.
Ellie Kemp