‘Blink182,’ ‘Ashley’ & More Listed as Passwords Most Likely to Be Hacked

This brand-new study will make you think twice about the email password you created when you were in high school.

As CNN reports, the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) recently conducted a survey to determine the internet’s most vulnerable passwords, and “Blink182” came out as the most frequently used musical artist.

Of course, just about every combination of “123456” were included on the list of the top ten most common passwords, along with “qwerty,” “password” and “abc123.” Ordinary words like “monkey,” “dragon” and “iloveyou” rounded out the top 20.

When broken into categories, the study found that “Ashley” was the most popular name used in passwords, followed by “Michael,” “Daniel,” “Jessica” and “Charlie.”

“Liverpool” was the most common soccer franchise and “cowboys1” (Dallas Cowboys) was the most frequently used NFL team.

According to Ian Levy—the technical director for NCSC—the purpose of the study is to raise awareness about hackable passwords.

“We understand that cybersecurity can feel daunting to a lot of people, but the National Cyber Security Centre has published lots of easily applicable advice to make you much less vulnerable,” he said. “Password re-use is a major risk that can be avoided—nobody should protect sensitive data with something that can be guessed, like their first name, local football team or favorite band.”

Levy also confirmed the best practice is to “be creative.” “Using hard-to-guess passwords is a strong first step and we recommend combining three random but memorable words,” he added. “Be creative and use words memorable to you, so people can’t guess your password.”

If you need us, we’ll be changing our passwords.