password: This is the most popular password of 2021, but why you should never use it – Times of India

Password management service NordPass is back with its annual list of top 200 most commonly used passwords. According to it, 123456 is still the most used password. While there is little to no difference in the overall list, what is astonishing is the fact that the password ‘123456’ was used 2,543,285 times in 2020. The usage increased to 103,170,552 times in 2021 worldwide.
“Unfortunately, the passwords keep getting weaker and people still don’t maintain proper password hygiene,” says Jonas Karklys, CEO of NordPass.
As per the research company, password ‘123456’ can be cracked in less than one seconds. The firm analysed 50 countries. 43 out of these 50 countries had ‘123456’ as the number one password.
In India, on the other hand, ‘password’ was the most commonly used password. It was used by 1,714,646 people in the country. Top-10 common passwords in India after ‘password’ are 12345, 123456, 12345678, 123456789, india123, 1234567890, 1234567 and qwerty. Other common passwords used by people in India are “iloveyou”, “krishna”, “sairam” and “omsairam”.
In India, 62 passwords out of the 200 can be cracked in less than a second. That turns out to be 31 per cent of the total password. This is lower when compared to the global percentage of 84.5 percent.
The firm has also devised a risk index, which sorts countries into three risk tiers: low, average, and high. The index has been devised according to the number of passwords leaked per capita. Regions like central and north America, Russia and Australia were marked in the High-risk tier. Most of the European countries were in the average risk category, while India was marked in the low risk tier.