We all use passwords every day; they have become very common today. Checking out mail, transferring money, shopping online, all those actions involve introducing a password. So if you use a password it is supposed to be a long difficult one in order not to get your account stolen. We are always told of stories about breaking easy passwords and stealing money.

Very many people have read and heard these stories, but let us see what happened to the passwords that people use.

10. ‘thomas’ (0.099%)
In the tenth place we see a name Thomas as a password. It was the most popular name in UK in the year 2000 maybe that is what made this password so popular. Anyway 1 person of 1000 picks this word as their password. Or could it be Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison? Their fans could use this password too.

9. ‘arsenal’ (0.111%)
The other popular choice for a password is the name of a soccer team. For example Arsenal is in 6th place in soccer related passwords. And it made it to the top 10 most common passwords.

8. ‘monkey’ (0.133%)
Why monkey? I dont understand it too. Maybe people think that no one would think of this password if they wanted to brake into your account. Usual there is a 6 minimum letter passwords and monkey is a 6 letter word, besides it is memorable so maybe this is what played its role.

7. ‘charlie’ (0.139%)
We have got one more name in our top list. Maybe such famous persons like Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Sheen or the Charlie from the Chocolate Factory persuaded people to choose that password. Or maybe people just use its Slang Meaning which means cocaine and that’s not a very good thing.

6. ‘qwerty’ (0.141%)
QWERTY is the word that is the easiest to type. Our keyboard set is called like that and this is what comes first to mind for those who use a 10 finger fast typing technique. It made 1 person out of 700 pick this word as their password or maybe not.

5. ‘123456’ (0.176%)
Another easy combination that is even easier for the users ‘123456’ it meet the requirements of minimum 6 letter password and this password contains numbers in it which is another requirement on some web sites. Just count to six and you get a password.

4. ‘letmein’ (0.176%)
A good desire when you want to check out your account or see if you received any money there. It is a modern equivalent of ‘open sesame’ which is longer and takes one second more to type. It is something like ‘trustno1’ password from X-Files series.

3. ‘liverpool’ (0.182%)
Liverpool is one of the most popular soccer teams in the world and here is the result: one person out of 550 picks this word as their password. So many people trust their team and their password.
By the way ‘liverpool’ is ranked 3rd in the most common soccer related passwords leaving Manchester United and Newcastle United far behind. Well maybe those names are too long and hard to type.

2. ‘password’ (0.378%)
Here we come; we have got to the 2nd place with password ‘password’. Well, when it says “Type Password” you start typing a password. And 1 person in 250 is doing that.

1. ‘123’ (0.3784%)
It has not gone too far from ‘password’ but it is even easier to count to 3 then to count to 6. Apparently not that many websites require users to have a minimum 6 letter passwords. And it brings us to 4 people out of 1,000 that type the simplest combination possible ‘123’. It is a good thing they dont type something like ‘111’ or ‘222’ etc. Maybe most of us know that it would be ridiculous to have such a simple password.

If you add up all those percentages you will get that 1.8 % of people worldwide use one of the passwords from the top 10 list. As a matter of fact 6.5 % of people use passwords from the top 100 list. We are glad that the remaining 91.7 % has nothing in common when they pick a password. It is up to you to decide whether to use a longer and stronger password or to use a more memorable one.

Source: LunaSouL of Hardware Zone Forums