Imagine: You have all your personal treasures in your basement, from valuables to sentimental items that are full of memories. Would you then lock your basement with an easy-to-pick combination lock?
That's exactly what many people do, at least in a figurative sense.North Passhas published its annual list of the most used passwords of 2024 - and these are also the worst ones you can use.
“123456” is the most used password of 2024
Nordpass evaluated a 2.5 terabyte database of passwords from 44 different countries and listed the 200 most common ones.
This includes data from the public internet and the dark web. Passwords from major data leaks this year were also included in the research.
These are the top 15
| Rang | password | How often has it been used |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 123456 | 3.018.050 |
| 2 | 123456789 | 1.625.135 |
| 3 | 12345678 | 884.740 |
| 4 | password | 692.638 |
| 5 | qwerty123 | 692.638 |
| 6 | qwerty1 | 583.630 |
| 7 | 111111 | 459.730 |
| 8 | 12345 | 395.573 |
| 9 | secret | 363.491 |
| 10 | 123123 | 351.576 |
| 11 | 1234567890 | 324.349 |
| 12 | 1234567 | 307.719 |
| 13 | 000000 | 250.043 |
| 14 | qwerty | 244.879 |
| 15 | abc123 | 217.230 |
Unsurprisingly, the absolute classic among the passwords ends up in first place: “123456”.
It should go without saying that such passwords are not a good idea, but as these numbers illustrate, it's probably far from it. NordPass found this password more than three million times in their research.
Passwords that are harder to guess at first glance are also often used. For example, "naruto" with over 29,000 uses or "1q2w3e" with over 33,000.
Because many services require a password these days, many people choose a simple one that they can easily remember. In the worst case, this applies to several services at the same time.
It would be better to use a password manager.Most of these tools can automatically generate secure passwords for you and save them. This means you benefit from greater security and you don't have to remember countless passwords. You can find out more about this in this article:
The use of passkeys is also recommended. You can access your accounts using other verification methods such as fingerprint scanning, Face ID or a PIN on your cell phone.
Hand on heart: Have you ever used one of these passwords yourself? Feel free to write it to us in the comments!
