The 200 Worst Passwords of 2020
We’ve been promoting strong passwords for a long time. We’ve promoted free password managers like LastPass.
We’ve written numerous articles such as this one and this one, hoping to help you find easy ways of creating and remembering strong passwords. But we know that not everyone takes strong passwords seriously. But we cannot understand why not. After all, your password is the front door to the vault of your personal information. But if your vault has a balsa wood door that anyone can kick down in less than a second – why even shut it?
Every year, some security company or another digs down and does some extensive research, and produces a list of the most commonly used passwords. This year NordPass teamed up with a top security firm to do the digging – and guess what passwords top that list?
The most popular one, “123456” was used by more than 2.5 million users. How quickly do you think a hacker could guess your password if it were 123456? The password “Picture1” was used by more than 371,600 people. And the password “password” was used by over 360,000 people. “iloveyou” and “password1.” But variations of “123456”, such as “1234567890” and “123123” take up most of the top ten.
Look at the top ten…
We hope you’ll take a few minutes to visit this page and make sure that none of your passwords are on that list of the two hundred worst passwords of 2020. Think about it… what year could be worse to be using weak passwords than this crazy year of 2020?
One more time —
ALWAYS USE STRONG PASSWORDS AND NEVER USE THE SAME PASSWORDS FOR ACCOUNTS WHICH DEAL WITH MONEY OR PERSONAL INFORMATION SUCH AS BANKS, CREDIT CARD SITES, ONLINE SHOPPING SITES, GOVERNMENT SITES AND SO ON.
I’d be surprised if any C8 reader didn’t use a password manager, you would have to have rocks in your head and everyone knows C8 readers don’t have that problem
What is a C8 reader? Sorry I’m so dense, but not everyone knows what short cuts stand for, and to come across something unknown and ignore it is defeating the purpose of an instructive message. I don’t understand how password managers work, or what we do with the passwords we are already using, so please don’t complicate things any further.
Using strong passwords might be complicating things a bit, but if you get your identity stolen or lose substantial sums of money, that’s complicating things a lot more and for a lot longer. Password managers save your passwords (new and old) in a secure-password-protected “vault”. Most will generate extremely strong passwords and remember them for you. Most even fill in the log-in forms.
A C8 Reader means “Cloudeight Reader”. This site is called Cloudeight… I think (I hope) that reader was being facetious.
I use LastPass manager (free version) and like how it works. It gives real strong
passwords that I could never even think of. The only password I have to worry about is the one for LastPass. And yes I use a very strong password and change it every few months.
I forgot (old age is the excuse here) my Last Pass password and have not been able to retrieve it. Now I’m stuck with a program I can’t use nor can I get it off my computer! I also downloaded Nord password keeper and now cannot use or delete it for the same reason listed above. Can someone please help me ?
I never thought of C8 being such an obvious answer, and wasn’t deliberately being facetious. The part I don’t understand about using a password manager is that Chrome already holds a lot of my passwords, as does Edge, and it seems to complicate an already difficult situation if I make a whole new set. I had finally decided to try it, and again chickened out upon wondering how to start and which manager to use. Today happens to be my 86th birthday, and believe me things do not get easier the older you get. I wasn’t very bright at anything technical in the first place. Thank you for the enormous help you supply to myself and so many people.
Barb.
Happy Birthday. The problem with letting your browser store your passwords is that anyone using your computer can access your password-protected sites, whereas most password managers like LastPass allow you to set a time limit before you must enter your master password again.
Thanks for your nice comments.
I have about 200 online accounts. If I had to remember all my passwords, I’d be in big trouble!!!! I have been using a password manager for years and years since you first mentioned it. I was so glad to see that only one of my passwords (letmein) was on the naughty list though. I didn’t use my password manager to generate it for me. It was just a tv guide site and I figure if someon wants to see what channels I subscribe to, I am glad to provide that entertainment for them. Other than that….I try to be as locked down as I can be….and not have to rely on my brain for the 200 accounts ! My brain is still capable of remembering my maser password for the manager.