Some six years after virtual private network company NordVPN started searching data breaches for the most-used passwords, things are every bit as bad as when the company started.

Each year, the company searches the dark web for passwords stolen by malware or exposed in security breaches to determine the most commonly-used passwords, and this year’s crop is as depressing as ever …

NordVPN says that it analyzed 2.5TB worth of credentials across 44 countries.

Together with NordStellar, we reviewed and analyzed a 2.5TB database extracted from various publicly available sources, including those on the dark web. No personal data was acquired or purchased to conduct this study.

We organized the data into different categories to help us analyze it by country of origin. That said, we focused only on the statistical information, so no personal data from internet users was included in this research.

We analyzed passwords stolen by malware or exposed in data leaks. In most cases, they were leaked with email addresses, allowing us to distinguish between corporate and personal credentials by domain name.

It’s never been easier to use a password manager to ensure you have strong, unique passwords for every site and service, and yet the top 10 password list still looks this:

Even number 200 on the list is ‘letmein’ …

Apple has long offered password managers across its devices, from the original Keychain app to the standalone Passwords app in iOS 18.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash