It’s that time of year again when Americans are reminded of how bad they are at protecting their personal information. We’re talking, of course, about the annual worst passwords ranking, a showcase of online negligence and a reminder of the year’s biggest pop culture icons.
As always, this year’s list was compiled by SplashData. Sadly, it offers few surprises.
Topping the list is the Yankees of bad passwords—you guessed it, “123456”. If you had something else in mind, it was probably the number 2 worst password, “password.” The first change to this year’s list is the increased use of “12345678,” which finds itself in third place, up from fourth. Other notable entries include “letmein” (7), “iloveyou” (10), monkey (13), starwars (16), “hello” (21), the telling “whatever” (23) and ironically, “trustno1.” At 100, “thunder” grabs the dubious worst of the worst honor.
Here are the top 25 worst passwords of 2017 (you can check out the top 100 list here):
1. 123456
2. Password
3. 12345678
4. qwerty
5. 12345
6. 123456789
7. letmein
8. 1234567
9. football
10. iloveyou
11. admin
12. welcome
13. monkey
14. login
15. abc123
16. starwars
17. 123123
18. dragon
19. passw0rd
20. master
21. hello
22. freedom
23. whatever
24. qazwsx
25. trustno1
While this list gives us little hope that people pay heed to the warning we post at the end of cybersecurity articles, here we go again: Pick a long password that isn’t a common phrase, don’t reuse passwords, and please don’t use anything you see on this list.
