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Which passwords are the most predictable in the world? pCloud unveils a shocking study and explains how to improve your online security

August 2022 by pCloud

While 90% of Internet users are afraid of having their passwords hacked, they do little to ensure the security of their digital lives!

Not only do they use passwords that are very easy to guess, but they use them for an average of five accounts each time. Clearly, they make it easy for hackers to do their job.

And yet, there is an urgent need to act: in 2021, acts of cyber-malware have increased by 37%.

The latest study by pCloud, an online storage and file sharing service for individuals and businesses, reveals alarming figures on online security practices.

It also outlines the most predictable passwords currently in use and best practices to keep cybercriminals at bay.

7 alarming figures on online security in 2022

53%

More than 1 in 2 people trust their memory to remember passwords. They will therefore use the ones they can easily remember, either common words or information from their personal lives.

78%

Nearly 8 out of 10 young people from Generation Z use a single password for all their online accounts.

900 dollars

That’s how much a hacker would have to pay to access all the information on your phone, credit cards and social media accounts.

10 minutes

That’s the average time it takes to crack a password of less than 6 characters.

90 500

That’s the number of searches each month on how to hack Facebook, the most popular social network for hackers. Cybercriminals want to recover compromising photos (including those where the user is tagged), but also all the personal data kept online.

60 500

Instagram is the second most wanted social network. Because it is owned by Facebook, it shares a lot of information, which means that having access to one often leads to access to the other.

6 600

Far behind, Snapchat is in 3rd place on the list. It is much less attractive to hackers because this app relies on privacy: all messages are deleted as soon as they are read.

The most predictable passwords in the world

The most popular passwords are frighteningly common: 123456, 111111, 123123 and password.

As for the first names, there is Eve (used 7,169,777 times) then Alex (7,117,656), Anna (6,512,390) and Max (5,670,058). They are very easy to find on social networks, even when it is not the name of the user (usually, they are chosen among the names of relatives tagged on the photos).

Among the favorite passwords, there are also:

• Food-related words: ice, tea and pie;
• The days of the week with a preference for Friday (157,139 uses) because it is the last day of the work week, but also Monday (138,231) and Sunday (128,170);
• The months of the year and in particular May (152,218), June (66,097) and August (63,457);
• The seasons with priority given to summer (1,054,215), then winter (457,563), spring (347,917) and autumn (151,668);
• The years with an undeniable preference for 2010 (10,000,000) because it saw the birth of the last wave of Generation Z, but also 1987 (8,400,000) and 1991 (8,300,000).

Best practices to secure passwords

To make your passwords difficult to crack, they should preferably be:

Long. A whole sentence is a must.

Without any sense. Sequences of letters and numbers without any logic are harder to crack.

Complex. You must combine words, numbers, capital letters and symbols.

Impersonal. The best practice is to ban all information related to your life (name, date of birth, favorite food, sports club...).

Unique. Each password should only be used once. That way, in the event of a breach, the attacker won’t have access to all the accounts.

Temporary. Passwords should be changed regularly.

Easy to live with. To avoid the headache of remembering a million different passwords, the easiest way is to use an encrypted online storage service or a password manager.


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