An annual list of the most commonly used passwords, a source of both humor and sadness to the human race, shows a change at the top for the first time in three years.

SplashData, a maker of password management software, started analyzing passwords leaked by hackers in 2011 and for the first two years of its study found that "password" was the most commonly used password, ahead of "123456."

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The two switched places in 2013, according to the latest list released over the weekend. The new rankings were influenced by a hack on Adobe that revealed 130 million passwords protected only by reversible encryption. Security firm Stricture Consulting Group was able to reveal the top 100 passwords from the Adobe hack, and "123456" came in first by a long shot. Stricture found 1.91 million uses of "123456" compared to 446,162 uses of "123456789" and 345,834 uses of "password." Only 43,497 people used the password for Druidia's air shield and President Skroob's luggage.
SplashData said it pulled from the Adobe list and others in making its top 25. The rankings were "compiled from files containing millions of stolen passwords posted online during the previous year," SplashData said in its announcement. The SplashData list isn't a carbon copy of the Adobe one, but the Adobe influence is clear, given that SplashData's 10th-most-common password is "adobe123."

As for "123456" becoming the new king, that may be due more to SplashData having a better data set than any actual change in people's password use. The Adobe breach probably contained passwords used over multiple years, and in 2010 Symantec ranked "123456" ahead of "password" as the most commonly used password of all time.

Regardless, the new SplashData list is a good reminder that many Internet users are practically begging to be hacked. If you know someone who fits this category, remind them that it's never too late to start using a password manager that can help create and securely store long, random passwords.

Before we go, here is SplashData's list of the top 25 most common passwords in 2013:

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you keep mate

Great thread @LEO

What many people call "hack" is just some idiots who are choosing VERY easy passwords...
There are some guessing scripts that trying many different combinations and it's a matter of time to crack a password.

As far as you are following this format, you are VERY safe :

A strong password must be 12 or more digits. And it must contain uppercase letters (A, B, C...), lowercase letters (a, b, c...), numbers (1, 2, 3...) and special characters (#, ^, &...)

OMG my password is 123456

This thread made me laugh before I even clicked on it. Hilarity

I feel for all those people who for years have been using 123456 as their password and now are being bullied into changing it. I've a suggestion: press "Shift" then 123456 and you will have yourself a password no one will guess in a million seconds!

!@#$%^

I've been using it for years and have never been hacked. But please, don't tell anyone.