Hey there! If you‘re like most people nowadays, you‘ve got a ton of online accounts protected by a password. But are your passwords really keeping your data safe?
I‘m Bruce, a cybersecurity expert with over 15 years of experience. In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll explain the dangerous prevalence of weak, common passwords in 2023 based on the latest research. I‘ll also provide actionable tips to help you finally improve your password security.
Whether you‘re a consumer worried about protecting online accounts or a business looking to strengthen employee password practices, you‘ll learn valuable insights here. Let‘s dig in!
Why Care About Common Passwords in 2023? A Quick Recap.
Before we get into the nitty gritty research, let‘s review why weak, common passwords remain a massive security problem even in 2023.
Although high-profile breaches like Yahoo and Ashley Madison exposed billions of accounts, many people continue using overly simple passwords. Passwords like "123456", "qwerty", or "password" remain astoundingly common despite being crazy easy for hackers to guess.
These weak passwords put our valuable personal, financial, and work data at huge risk of compromise through brute force attacks. Hackers routinely access thousands of accounts per hour by guessing weak passwords.
So why do people cling to bad password habits despite the well-known risks? There‘s interesting psychology behind this…
The Psychology of Bad Password Choices: Why We Sabotage Our Security
Choosing weak passwords often comes down to:
Laziness – People don‘t want to bother with complex passwords, so they pick the bare minimum that platforms allow.
Dislike change – If initial passwords worked fine, why improve? People cling to old passwords out of habit.
Complacency – After years without an account breach, people assume their passwords are secure enough. This leads to false confidence.
Overconfidence – Minor tweaks to passwords like adding "!" or capital letters lead people to overestimate their unpredictability.
Underestimating threats – Many wrongly believe they aren‘t high value targets for hackers and downplay risks.
But as dozens of high-profile breaches show, these assumptions collapse in the face of sophisticated hacking tools and cybercriminal determination. Now let‘s examine just how bad common passwords remain in 2023.
Top 20 Most Common Passwords of 2023
Repeated studies of leaked password data find the same weak passwords continue topping the charts. According to Google‘s 2023 research on compromised passwords [1], the top 10 most common passwords last year were:
- 123456 (2.5 million exposed users)
- 123456789 (500k exposed users)
- picture1 (400k exposed users)
- password (350k exposed users)
- 12345678 (325k exposed users)
- 111111 (300k exposed users)
- 1234567890 (275k exposed users)
- 123456789 (250k exposed users)
- 12345 (225k exposed users)
- 000000 (200k exposed users)
Table 1 visualizes this data:
| Rank | Password | Number of Exposed Users |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 123456 | 2.5 million |
| 2 | 123456789 | 500,000 |
| 3 | picture1 | 400,000 |
| 4 | password | 350,000 |
| 5 | 12345678 | 325,000 |
| 6 | 111111 | 300,000 |
| 7 | 1234567890 | 275,000 |
| 8 | 123456789 | 250,000 |
| 9 | 12345 | 225,000 |
| 10 | 000000 | 200,000 |
Variations of "123456" and "password" remain incredibly common despite how obviously predictable they are. These weak passwords put millions of accounts at risk annually.
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