You won't believe what the 88th most popular (and stupid) password of 2022 is

Password Unlock Iphone X Hero
(Image credit: Future)

A strong password is vital to making sure that you keep your online accounts and data safe, but some people seem to really struggle with choosing the right one — as this list of the 200 most common passwords of 2022 clearly shows.

A report by NordPass shows that there are some truly awful passwords in use, with the most common being the ubiquitous "password." That's shortly followed by "123456" but things get worse when you scroll down the list.

Much, much worse. And you won't believe what some people use to keep their stuff safe.

Password madness

If we scroll down the list of the most common passwords of the year we see a number of variations on the "123456" we mentioned earlier, including the always popular "123123." In fact, the first use of actual real words beyond "password," "guest," and "qwerty" comes at number 21 with "D1lakiss."

Other terrible passwords include "qwertyuiop" and "qwerty123" which is mildly better but will still be cracked in less than a second. But hey, you folks get a mark for using numbers and letters.

Scroll all the way down to the 88th most common password and things start to get interesting, although not actually any better. That password is "fuckyou" which seems a little harsh — they could at least have put a number or two in there, right?

Other popular passwords include the usual smattering of names like "daniel" and "thomas" but if there's one thing this all tells us is that Apple Passkeys can't come soon enough. The sooner we don't have to make passwords at all, the better.

Until then, make sure to check out our list of the best password managers for your iPhone and beyond. And check out that NordPass list to see which passwords you should absolutely avoid, too.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.