Ahhh. The beginning of May.
May is not only a month. It is a lot of other things. It is a way to ask a question. It is also a way to give permission.
Mother, may I?
Yes, you may.
And today, another kind of question and permission is in all our lives. The evasive password.
Yes. We all have them, and we all need them. To do any kind of business online, from shopping to banking, a password is most always required.
Some of us aren’t very good at choosing them. And as more and more parts of our lives become dependent on the web, the sheer number of passwords we have to manage can be overwhelming.
With that in mind, it is easy to see why so many people get a little careless, reusing the same password for multiple accounts or using overly simple, easy-to-remember passwords.
But this poses a major security problem: A password that’s easy to remember is a password that’s easy to guess. This creates an exploitable attack surface for cybercriminals to steal your credentials, money, and even your identity.
We all know that easy-to-remember passwords are convenient. But. But. They can be devastating. A weak and predictable password is easy to crack. Hackers may use software that guesses the most common passwords. And then you are sunk.
But everyone does it.
So NordVPN conducted a study on this. Researchers sorted the passwords by country (which included 44 countries), then further sorted the data according to generation. They mapped it all out by age. So here they are.
What are the 10 most common passwords in the U.S.?
The first one is admin, and they don’t improve from there. Here are the most common passwords for internet users in the United States:
1. admin
2. password
3. 123456
4. 12345678
5. 123456789
6. 12345
7. Password
8. 12345678910
9. Gmail.12345
10. Password1
All I have to say if you use one of these? You are asking for it.
So.
How did the younger generations fare? Not much better.
You would think that the tech-savvy younger generations would also be more security-conscious. But it just isn’t so. They are often worse than the rest.
What are the 10 most common passwords for Gen Z?
1. 12345
2. 123456
3. 12345678
4. 123456789
5. password
6. 1234567890
7. skibidi
8. 1234567
9. pakistan123
10. assword
What are the 10 most common passwords for millennials?
1. 123456
2. 1234qwer
3. 123456789
4. 12345678
5. 12345
6. 1234567890
7. password
8. 1234567
9. Contraseña
10. mustufaj
What are the 10 most common passwords for Gen X?
1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. 12345
4. veronica
5. lorena
6. 12345678
7. 1234567
8. valentina
9. teckiss
10. follar
What are the 10 most common passwords for boomers?
1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. 12345
4. maria
5. Contraseña
6. susana
7. silvia
8. graciela
9. monica
10. claudia
So there they are. The most common by our ages.
And the rest you probably already know. But here it is.
Hackers can easily get these passwords. It’s pretty simple for them to access password lists by searching databases of compromised accounts. It doesn’t take long for a password dump to end up on the dark web after a cyberattack.
And the hacker is on the way to getting into your account.
“””””””
Security used to be an inconvenience sometimes, but now it’s a necessity all the time. — Martina Navratilova
“””””””
The weakest link in the chain is the one that breaks it. — Thomas Reid
“””””””
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. — Thomas Jefferson
“””””””
