The world's worst passwords.

Passwords are everywhere. In a world that’s more and more reliant on the internet, each time we visit certain sites online or on our mobiles, we’re asked to identify ourselves with a password. Bank accounts, the water bill, email, your My3 account, YouTube, even online shopping… most of us probably have at least ten accounts online.

And with so many accounts to remember details for, it’s no surprise that people are getting a bit slack when it comes to dreaming up something special. In fact, a new report has named and shamed ‘password’ as the top entry in a list of the world’s worst passwords. People of the internet, we salute your creativity.

But there’s a bigger issue here. Passwords are our passport to security and preventing online criminals from stealing our identity and bank details.

The top 20 LEAST secure passwords.

That’s why we’re sharing this list of the howlers that make up the 20 most predictable passwords, according to US company SplashData, which provides security apps and other services. Surprising entries in the list include baseball, shadow and sunshine, along with more predictable choices such as 123456 and abc123.

1. password
2. 123456
3.12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123

Our advice is to be careful when choosing your password, and to mix up your passwords instead of using the same one time and time again. That way, if one account gets broken into, a hacker won’t have instant access all your other accounts as well. Try our top tips for a better password.