The most common passwords of 2016 are exactly what you’d expect

By Tim Biggs

We’ve all heard the warnings about passwords — use a variety of character types, make it random, use a password manager — but many of us, it seems, still aren’t listening.

Every year some security firm or another releases a list of the most common passwords used online, and every year the top spot goes to some variation of ‘123456’. This is not surprising. By definition, a list of most common passwords will always be a list of worst passwords, regardless of how many people are using strong, complex, unique combinations.

What’s interesting about the 2016 list released by Keeper — which, keep in mind, is a maker of password management software — is that it gives us a look at just how much of our information is locked behind shoddy passwords.

Of the 10 million passwords the company collected, 17 per cent of them were ‘123456’. That means for every six passwords collected, around one of them was this insanely easy to guess string of numbers.

All up, Keeper says the 25 passwords on its list accounted for more than half the passwords collected.

Here’s the full list: