Most Common Password List Shows Shocking Lack Of Imagination Of Computer Users

In a shocking indictment of the imaginativeness of computer users and humanity in general it turns out the most common password is - 'password'.

The second most common? 123456.

Come on people we can do better than this. Only it seems we can't.

Must do better

A list compiled by Mark Burnett examined six million unique username/password combos in the public domain and whittled them down to the most common 10,000.

An astonishing 91% of all passwords appear in the top 1000.

Here's the top 20 along with how many times they appear.

1. password, 32027
2. 123456, 25969
3. 12345678, 8667
4. 1234, 5786
5. qwerty, 5455
6. 12345, 4523
7. dragon, 4321
8. pussy, 3945
9. baseball, 3739
10. football, 3682
11. letmein, 3536
12. monkey, 3487
13. 696969, 3345
14. abc123, 3310
15. mustang, 3289
16. michael, 3249
17. shadow, 3209
18. master, 3182
19. jennifer, 2581
20. 111111, 2570

Click here for a list of the top 100.

Here it is in handy word cloud form.

But that is a big 'password'.

Names, sports and expletives all feature highly. Not exactly difficult to work out for someone who knows you at all.

So, if you're reading this and any of them look familiar CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD NOW.

But not to 'password', obviously.