An ethical hacker has issued a stark warning for anyone that's using a common password or a password that has identifiable information within it.
Strong passwords are absolutely essential for maintaining security on accounts, while there is a balance to be struck between something that's memorable and something that's hard to crack.
Usually, nothing personal and a good mixture of upper and lowercase letters with numbers and symbols in there is considered a safe shout as long as the same password is not used across different accounts.
But a lot of the most common passwords in the world are incredibly easy to figure out.
Speaking to Mail Online about what to avoid when choosing a password, Joe Cockroft, a cybersecurity expert, said: "Using identifiable information, such as a favourite football team, names of family members, or the city you live in, can make passwords easier to determine.
"Threat actors will often use a list of thousands or millions of words that help them crack your password."
These hackers will use these words in a list to try and guess the correct password and access accounts.
An ethical hacker has warned about the dangers of using common passwords or passwords with identifiable information in them / Sakorn Sukkasemsakorn, iStock
The top 10 most common passwords in the world, according to NordPass, are:
- 123456
- admin
- 12345678
- 123456789
- 1234
- 12345
- password
- 123
- Aa123456
- 1234567890
The top 10 in America is slightly different, with 'UNKNOWN' and 'abc123' included in the list:
- 123456
- password
- admin
- 1234
- UNKNOWN
- 12345678
- 123456789
- 12345
- abc123
- Password
And in the UK, the country's love of football shines through with 'liverpool', 'arsenal' and 'chelsea' all in the top 10; 'qwerty' is high up too:
- 123456
- password
- qwerty
- liverpool
- 123456789
- arsenal
- 12345678
- 12345
- abc123
- chelsea
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