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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

The Bad Passwords of 2016

January 17, 2017

We are still in a password driven world. Despite being warned time and time again about creating strong passwords, people still insist on using the dumbest passwords year after year. BGR reported on a list of the most common passwords of 2016. The list was compiled after examining over 10 million passwords that became public following security breaches throughout the year. The review disclosed that 17% of Internet users still use 123456 as a password. The top 10 passwords are just as bad as past years.

  1. 123456
  2. 123456789
  3. qwerty
  4. 12345678
  5. 111111
  6. 1234567890
  7. 1234567
  8. password
  9. 123123
  10. 987654321

Notice that four of the top ten are only six characters and the longest one is only ten characters. In case you've forgotten, the current recommendation is 14 characters or more. I suspect that the list for 2017 will be just as bad unless providers start enforcing password complexity.

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