People learned nothing about using proper passwords in 2016

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Personal security and private data protection are probably two of the most concerning things to many consumers in this digital age, yet they’ve learned nothing about using proper passwords in 2016. Keeper Security is one of the first to release its study about the most common passwords used in 2016 and the usual suspects are still topping the list. Holding the top spot with 17% of people using it to secure their private data, the most beloved “123456” followed by its brother “123456789.”

Using external, public data sources we scoured 10 million passwords from data breaches that happened in 2016. A few things jumped out:

  • The list of most frequently used passwords has changed little over the past few years. That means that user education has limits. While it’s important for users to be aware of risks, a sizable minority are never going to take the time or effort to protect themselves. IT administrators and website operators must do the job for them.
  • Four of the top 10 passwords on the list – and seven of the top 15 – are six characters or shorter. This is stunning in light of the fact that, as we’ve reported, today’s brute-force cracking software and hardware can unscramble those passwords in seconds. Website operators that permit such flimsy protection are either reckless or lazy.
passwords
courtesy Keeper Security
  • The presence of passwords like “1q2w3e4r” and “123qwe” indicates that some users attempt to use unpredictable patterns to secure passwords, but their efforts are weak at best. Dictionary-based password crackers know to look for sequential key variations. At best, it sets them back only a few seconds.
  • Email providers don’t appear to be working all that hard to prevent the use of their services for spam. Security expert Graham Cluley believes that the presence of seemingly random passwords such as “18atcskd2w” and “3rjs1la7qe” on the list indicates that bots use these codes over and over when they set up dummy accounts on public email services for spam and phishing attacks. Email providers could do everyone a favor by flagging this kind of repetition and reporting the guilty parties.

We can criticize all we want about the chronic failure of users to employ strong passwords. After all, it’s in the user’s best interests to do so. But the bigger responsibility lies with website owners who fail to enforce the most basic password complexity policies. It isn’t hard to do, but the list makes it clear that many still don’t bother.

What do you think of Keeper’s report? Are you using a strong password? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

[button link=”https://blog.keepersecurity.com/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Keeper[/button]

Last Updated on January 23, 2017.

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