The release of Gawker passwords a little over a week ago has led to many fearing for the safety of their private online information. But, for inormation that is so private, the passwords are surprisingly simple. The Wall Street Journal analyzed the 188,279 passwords that were decoded to find the most commonly used password by far is "123456". Many people also opt for "password".
1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345678
4. lifehack
5. qwerty
6. abc123
7. 111111
8. monkey
9. consumer
10. 12345
While this isn't the first time passwords have been leaked, the results are similar. In October 2009, an anonymous uses posted usernames and passwords for over 10,000 Windows Live Hotmail accounts. Five of the top 10 on this list were also all number passwords and topping the list was also "123456". Also in the top 10 of the Hotmail list were "123456789", "12345678", 1234567" and "111111".
In both cases, only passwords that could be decoded are included therefore it is not representative of all users as some may have more complex passwords.
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