And the Password is…
Back in the old days, a password was something you had to remember as a child to get into a tree fort or neighborhood clubhouse…or a classic game show hosted by Allen Ludden. These days, passwords are tied to anything we do online. At first, we were cautioned to use things we’d remember…now, we’re cautioned to make up collections of letters, numbers, and symbols that ne’er-do-wells could not crack.
But it seems that some of us haven’t gotten the message. Insurance experts at the Alan Boswell Group analyzed password data from a site identifying hundreds of millions of passwords exposed in data breaches; the goals was to find the most common password choices used online.
Despite constant warnings against it, it appears the most common password of those being hacked is “123456”. That showed up nearly 210 million times. And from the “you can’t make this stuff up” department…the password “123456789” was the second most common, showing up 81 million times, followed not surprisingly by “12345678” in third place, more than 70 million times.
No, I am not kidding.
Nor am I kidding that in fourth place of most commonly hacked passwords is…the word “password” which still showed up more than 52 million times.
The analysts also broke down passwords by category…including sports teams… “Pittsburgh Steelers” as a password is 7th among sports teams, with “Philadelphia Eagles” in 9th and “Dallas Cowboys” in 10th.
And it goes on like this, and while some of it is humorous—“Superman” is the most common fictional character password choice—there is a financial side to this. The FBI’s latest internet crime report found suspected internet crime losses was more than $16 billion in 2024 alone, up 33 percent from the year before.
It appears the password, therefore, is “caution”.
