Drumroll, please! And the award for WORST online password goes to…

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Desperately trying to remember a password to a particular online account is fist-clenchingly annoying, so it's no real surprise that many of us opt for very simple passwords when creating our accounts.

Oh, and we also tend to use the same very simple passwords for multiple accounts 'cos we're super-smart like that.

And if anyone knows just how ridiculous many of us are when it comes to online security, it's SplashData who recently released their annual list of the 25 worst passwords.

For the sixth year in a row, 123456 took the top slot when it came to putting a user at risk of identity theft while password came in a close second.

Compiled by assessing more than five million passwords which were leaked last year, SplashData were able to identify the combinations of letters and numbers which can leave an individual vulnerable to hacking.

Reminding us that we need to do more than capitalise one letter to get the better of online hackers, Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData offered a little advice which we should probably pay attention to.

"Making minor modifications to an easily guessable password does not make it secure, and hackers will take advantage of these tendencies," 

"Our hope is that by researching and putting out this list each year, people will realise how risky it is to use these common logins, and they will take steps to strengthen their passwords and use different passwords for different websites," he added.

And without further ado, here are the 25 worst passwords of the last 12 months.

Taking the top five slots, we have 123456password, 1234512345678, and football. These are followed by qwerty, 1234567890, 1234567, princess and 1234.

Coming in at number 11 we have login, welcomesolo, abc123 and admin. Slots 16 to 20 brought us 121212,  flower, passw0rd, dragon and Sunshine.

And the final five to make it in the top 25? Let's hear it for master, hottie, loveme, zaq1zaq1 and password1.

Yep, we definitely have some work to do on the ol' password front, ladies.

 

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