The Most Common Passwords From the Yahoo Mail Leak

'Monkey' is among the most frequently used passwords

On Wednesday, we learned that about 400,000 Yahoo Mail passwords were apparently leaked.

Both Swedish security expert Anders Nilsson and Declan McCullagh of CNET ran the numbers on the leaked passwords, giving us a look into the psychology of password creation.

Their results differ very slightly in a few places, but mostly match up. “abcdef,” strings of keyboard letters like “qwerty,” and ascending numerals were common. More interesting are the most frequently used “base words,” according to Nilsson:

password
welcome
qwerty
monkey
jesus
love
money
freedom
ninja
writer

The overall top 10 also include “sunshine” and “princess.” (We love freedom, monkeys, sunshine, and ninjas—yes, that sounds like the Internet.) Among the top-used first names, according to McCullagh’s list, are michael, jordan, and michelle (case sensitive). Nilsson also indicates that of passwords that end in a number 0-9, 1 is, not surprisingly, the most popular. When a number is required, it’s so tempting to just move your left pinky to tack on a 1. But 5, which came in last, may be the safer choice.