The list of the 25 most common passwords of 2015 now available

There are several factors of security that are out of a person's control these days. Credit cards can get swiped by hackers from company databases and entire operating systems can be compromised without you having any idea. Perhaps the only thing you could possibly do to protect yourself in these instances is to avoid things like shopping in stores, online encounters, or using modern tech - hardly a reasonable solution. In the event sensitive data is stolen, your last bastion of security is a solid online password, or so you'd think.

Every year for the past five years, Splashdata has published a list of the 25 most commonly used passwords. This list is an attempt to educate people on what's commonly used so they can start thinking about changing passwords to something more complex and random. Sadly, after five years, not much has changed on the top 25. Below you will find the complete list of the most commonly used passwords in order of their popularity. You'll also find a "+" or a "-" with a number next to each password to indicate whether it saw a growth, no change, or a reduction in popularity over the previous year's list.

1. 123456 (0)
2. password (0)
3. 12345678 (+1)
4. qwerty (+1)
5. 12345 (-2)
6. 123456789 (0)
7. football (+3)
8. 1234 (-1)
9. 1234567 (+2)
10. baseball (-2)
11. welcome (new)
12. 1234567890 (new)
13. abc123 (+1)
14. 111111 (+1)
15. 1qaz2wsx (new)
16. dragon (-7)
17. master (+2)
18. monkey (-6)
19. letmein (-6)
20. login (new)
21. princess (new)
22. qwertyuiop (new)
23. solo (new)
24. passw0rd (new)
25. starwars (new)

There you have it. There are only eight new entries to this list compared to 2014, and combing through it we think you'll agree that, despite the human brain being capable of great creativity, this list shows that many of us are either too lazy or lack inspiration when it comes to protecting our online assets.

Interestingly, only two passwords out of the top ten used by Ashley Madison users are not present on this year's list, with one of them being DEFAULT, can you guess the other?

Source: Splashdata's teamsID blog