The 5 Most Used Password in the past 4 Years – and How to Remember a Better One

Over the past 4 years the most used passwords in the world have been identified.

It turns out that some people are just plain stupid with what they consider to be a password and over the 4 year period, the top 5 have remained almost consistent. 

So before you find out if you are in the stupid end of the password ideas, lets look at one of my methods of easy to remember but unique to each site password creation.

How to have a strong password you can remember

Like many of you, I have had a “standard” password for many years but I do something to make it unique to each site.

Lets say my standard password is elephant.

When I go to a site, I take the first and last letter of the website name and add that into my password as a capital letter. The position you add it into your password is up to you but lets say I do it after the L.

So if you were creating a password for this site – cctvdesign.online, you would take the first letter – C and the last letter – N (we don’t use the com.au or www parts as they are too common) and create a password of elCNephant.

For another site such as my wifes business – charlotteswebpapercraft.com.au it would be elCTephant.

To make it even stronger I can substitute letters in the word elephant for numbers or symbols such as changing an E to a 3 so we end up with 3lCN3phant or 3lCN3phant respectively.

Onto the worst password list

 The 5 worst password you could possibly be using are:

• 123456
• password
• 12345678
• qwerty
• abc123

12345 also made the list but only in 2014 so lets see if it stays there.

In the security alarm industry there are some other common code patterns to disarm the alarm. 

These are typically people year of birth so we see lots of codes with 19xx. Because most people are still using a 4 digit code, we only have 2 other digits to work out but how?

Easy – look for the dirty or worn buttons on the code pad.

If it was the code pad in the top image, we can see the digits 1 9 7 0 have been used, the code is most likely 1970 as a person born in 1907 would be having troubles using the code pad.

Even if it is not a birth yer, knowing the 4 digits there are only 16 possible codes.
In the example below the likely combinations are 1967 or 1967 but it may be one of the other 14 combinations.

Have you any stories of  crazy user codes?