These are the dumbest passwords

Football fans watch out
These are the dumbest passwords

The simpler the password, the easier it is for cyber criminals to strike. According to a study by Telekom, football fans in particular are an easy target because the passwords are closely aligned with their favorite club.

Whether it's “Schalke04” or “Borussia”: According to Deutsche Telekom, many football fans use passwords that are far too easy. The Magenta Group published a list of simple codes from Telekom customers that cyber criminals had illegally intercepted and offered for sale in dark channels. Telekom has a special security team that keeps an eye on such dark channels and informs its customers when their passwords appear there. Criminals, for example, used so-called phishing emails to intercept security data from unsuspecting users.

“We see that German users continue to use the most obvious thing as their password too often – and that is exactly what makes them vulnerable,” explained Telekom security chief Thomas Tschersich. If you try out the Bundesliga table club by club together with all the emails that I can find online using simple means, you unfortunately generate tens of thousands of active access keys. “And that is too easy and has never been up to date.”

According to Telekom's findings, the classic “Password1” is still widespread among the insecure login details, with “Schalke04” in second place. “Borussia” is in eighth place, “Dortmund09” in 18th place, “Fussball” in 20th place and “Ronaldo1” in 26th place. The course of the current Bundesliga season is also having an impact on the negative password ranking: “Bayer04Lev” is on the rise, while “FCBayern” has fallen out of the top 100,” said a Telekom spokesperson, urging people to use more complicated and therefore more secure passwords.

The password “1q2w3e4r”, which at first seems comparatively difficult, comes in sixth place in the ranking. However, this code is also far too simple: these eight numbers and letters are right next to each other on the keyboard. First names such as Maximilian and Heinrich are also often used as passwords, without numbers or special characters. According to Telekom, these are mostly older users who have not changed their password for a very long time.