This year the annual research covers 50 different countries, top passwords among different genders, as well as the global view
In Nigeria, the most popular password is 123456, according to the 2021 research by NordPass.
Moreover, it is the top password in 43 countries out of 50 analysed, and is also the most popular one worldwide.
These are the top 20 most common passwords in Nigeria:
123456
password
favour
123456789
12345
school
emmanuel
blessing
computer
sunday
samuel
nigeria
mylove
1234567
lovely
12345678
success
damilola
christ
london
This year, NordPass published research features not only the top 200 passwords globally, but also covers the top 200 passwords of 50 different countries.
Furthermore, readers can also explore the most common passwords among different genders in all the researched countries.
Here is the full research: https://nordpass.com/most-
Trends and differences among countries and genders
Overall, Nigeria’s password list has similar trends as many countries.
Nigeria had the biggest number of religious passwords.
For example: “christ”, “pastor”, “church”, “jesusislord”, “heaven”, “godisgood”, “divine”, “goodness”, “jesus1”, “blessed”, “jesuschrist”, “prayer”.
Loving and positive words, such as “success”, “iloveyou”, “lovely”, “mylove”, “mother” and others were also used more often than in the other countries.
Easy number combinations, such as the winning “123456”, are popular everywhere in the world.
In fact, “123456” was the most popular password in 43 out of the 50 countries analysed, however, the top passwords in the remaining seven countries were not that much different.
In India, the top password was the word “password”, Indonesia — “12345”, Japan — “password”, Portugal — “12345”, Spain — “12345”, Thailand — “12345”, Ukraine — “qwerty”.
Football-related passwords were also used quite often in the Nigerian password list.
These were mostly passwords related to the UK’s Premier League, for example, “chelsea”, “arsenal”, “liverpool”, “manchester”.
These passwords were more often spotted among men.
Names were used a lot as well.
Some of the most popular names were: “emmanuel”, “samuel”, “damilola”, “temitope”, and so on/
Weak passwords — a global problem
The NordPass research also illustrates how weak the top passwords are indicating the time it would take the hacker to crack that password.
While the “Time to crack” measure is indicative, and depends on various technological aspects, it’s a good reference point on how poor these passwords are.
Overall, in Nigeria, 71 passwords out of the 200 can be cracked in less than a second.
That is 35.5 per cent of the passwords, whereas globally, the percentage is 84.5 per cent.
“Unfortunately, the passwords keep getting weaker and people still don’t maintain proper password hygiene,” says Jonas Karklys, CEO of NordPass. “It’s important to understand that passwords are the gateway to our digital lives, and with us spending more and more time online, it’s becoming enormously important to take better care of our cybersecurity.”
Found your password on the “most popular” list?
Jonas Karklys, CEO of NordPass advises to follow a few simple steps in order to improve your password hygiene.
If you found your password on the list, make sure to change it to a unique and strong password.
Ideally, use a password generator online or in your password manager app to create a truly complex one.
Store your passwords in a password manager.
Nowadays, an average person has around 100 accounts, therefore, it would be impossible to remember all the passwords if they are indeed unique and complex.
Password managers are a great solution for that, however, make sure to use a trustworthy, reliable, and, ideally, third-party audited provider.
Use multi-factor authentication: Whether it’s biometric authentication, phone message, or a physical key, it’s always a good idea to add an additional security layer on top of your password.
Methodology: The list of passwords was compiled in partnership with independent researchers specializing in research of cybersecurity incidents.
They evaluated a 4TB-sized database.
Researchers classified the data into various verticals, which allowed them to perform a statistical analysis based on countries and gender.
With regard to the gender vertical, the researched data was classified by gender only if it included a gender key.
If the breached data didn’t contain the data key, it was classified as “unknown”.