Indians, one of
the biggest internet consumers in the world, have a penchant for really simple
passwords, a study carried out by NordPass has found. The study, which focused
on the kind of passwords people use across the world, looked at the most common
passwords and assessed the amount of time it took to crack them.

Quite
unsurprisingly, the most used passwords in the world are the simple numeric
ones, such as 12345, 123456, 123456789 or the easier 111111. Analysts found
that it would take less than a second to crack these passwords.

Alphabetic simple
passwords include of course ‘password’, qwerty, abc123, iloveyou and xxx. These
passwords, according to the study, can be cracked in under a minute.

One password,
almost unique among Indian internet users but quite common among those, is
india123. This took the analysts nearly 17 minutes to crack.

The study, while
delving into common passwords, also throws light on the kind of passwords
people from various geographic locales use. For example, the band name ‘Onedirection’
is a password favourite and is among the most popular passwords in several
countries.

The list of common
passwords also shows the popularity of Liverpool — the football club. Too many
people around the world use Liverpool in their passwords. Among car enthusiasts,
Porsche and Ferrari are favourites not just among cars but also among
passwords.

Many people around
the world use expletives as passwords. However, there is a gendered aspect to
it. The research found men were more prone to use swear words as passwords than
women. On the other end, women used ‘iloveyou’ as their password way more often
than men.

Setting easy
passwords may appear convenient to the lazy, but it does put people at
significant risk. With financial operations in the digital space increasing by
the second, people who use simple passwords effectively put their cash and
assets at risk. Putting a super simple password is equivalent to leaving one’s
home unlocked.

Therefore, analysts
say that it is vital to choose a strong password to protect against
cyberattacks. The study advises using passwords 12 characters or longer using a
combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols.