DO YOU think you’ve got an uncrackable password? It might not be as safe as you reckon.
Common passwords used by lots of people are easy to guess, making them a liability when it comes to staying safe from hackers.
If a hacker were to guess your logins, you could lose access to your Facebook and Gmail accounts, or worse…
Cybersecurity company NordPass recently revealed the 200 most common passwords – and some of them might surprise you.
The list was put together with the help of independent researchers specialising in cybersecurity incidents.
They evaluated a 4TB database of credentials – enough memory to store 800,000 songs.
Read more about cyber security
In the NordPass most common passwords list, you can see results broken down by 50 different countries.
In at number one for the UK is “123456”, while in at number two is – you’ve guessed it – “password”.
Other common credentials were based on people’s favourite bands or sports teams.
Number three in the UK’s list, for instance, is “liverpool” – while “arsenal” occupies the number eight spot.
Most read in Tech
“Monkey”, “chocolate” and a number of common first names also featured in Britain’s list of favourite passwords.
Using a common password leaves your online accounts exposed to cyber crooks.
That’s because hackers can easily guess them using specialised software that checks thousands of credential combos an hour.
Once in your accounts, crooks can access your emails, social media and more.
They can also use any information they glean to target you with phishing attacks in a bid to get hold of your bank account logins.
Many companies have stepped up their efforts to encourage users to use stronger passwords.
For instance, Apple and Google now automatically suggest strong passwords when any online form prompts you to create one.
A good password should be eight or more characters long and not contain your user name, real name or company name.
It should contain no full words, be different to passwords used elsewhere and contain at least one each of the following: Upper-case letter, lower-case letter, number and symbol (such as % or &).
Any of the passwords in the list below would take cyber crooks less than a few seconds to crack.
Full list of passwords to avoid
- 123456
- password
- liverpool
- password1
- 123456789
- 12345
- qwerty
- liverpool1
- charlie
- arsenal
- chelsea
- abc123
- 12345678
- football
- monkey
- arsenal1
- 1234567
- chocolate
- rangers
- 123123
- qwerty123
- welcome
- charlie1
- thomas
- qwerty1
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk