The Most Commonly-Used Passwords of 2021

Posted: December 22, 2021 at 9:24 am

Yeah, we’re headed into 2022, but there are still some people who haven’t learned that “123456” isn’t the smartest password to use.

That’s right: as we head into a new year, the security wonks at NordPass have compiled their annual list of the most commonly-used passwords, and that long-running favorite string of numbers is still at the top of the heap for computer users in the U.S.

The company searched through a 4TB database of hacked security keys to find its best of the worst, and how long each took to crack. Most of the top ten took less than a second.

In second place for 2021 was — you may have guessed it, because the hackers sure did — “password.”

Ranking third was “12345,” and fourth saw “123456789.”

Rounding out the top five was the ever-so-tricky “password1.”

Naturally, “qwerty” — the first five letters on the first row of keys on your keyboard — made the top 10.

If you’re guilty of using any of the passwords on Nord’s list — and your data somehow hasn’t yet been stolen — how about you burn up a New Year’s resolution and come up with something trickier? If you can’t think of anything creative, there’s always the company’s password generator.

Here are NordPass’ top ten most common passwords in the U.S.:

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345
4. 123456789
5. password1
6. abc123
7. 12345678
8. qwerty
9. 111111
10. 1234567