America's most used password of 2025 revealed and it's not what you'd expect
America’s most used password of 2025 has been revealed and it is nothing that you would expect.
This comes as the latest NordPass report provided some insight into what words Americans are using to secure their accounts.
Some notable mentions include ‘Password’ being the seventh most used password, along with ‘123456’ in the third spot. Meanwhile ‘password’ with a lower case ‘P’ was the second most used word of the year.
So, which one took the top spot? It turns out that the most used word for a password this year was ‘admin’.
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It’s not exactly the most secure options for protecting your accounts from any malicious activity, especially when cyber criminals are known use tools to automatically try simple or common passwords to gain access into peoples’ accounts.
So, how does the younger generation compare to boomers when it comes to cybersecurity?
It turns out the Gen-Z are even worse than 80-year-olds with their password habits.
New research by password manager NordPass uncovered that the most popular password to use for people born after 1997 is ‘12345’, with ‘password’ being the fifth most popular choice.
Boomers are only slightly safer than this, with their favorite password being ‘123456’.
In the report, the authors said: “We tend to assume that the younger generations online are digital natives – having grown up immersed in the online world, they possess an innate understanding of cyber security and its risks. However, our research has debunked this misconception.
“Despite significant efforts over the years to educate users about cybersecurity through awareness campaigns, our data shows little improvement in widespread password hygiene and security habits.”
They continued: “It’s official: ‘123456’ has once again claimed the controversial title of the world’s most common password — and one of the weakest. That marks six out of seven years this password has topped our chart, with ‘password’ claiming the honor just once. The message is clear: Users favor simplicity, even at the cost of personal security.”
They went on to explain: “Much to our surprise, password quality is poor across all generations. Where we expected discerning differences, we actually faced a striking uniformity in vulnerabilities. ‘12345’ and ‘123456’ emerged as the top password choice in every age group, and other simple numeric sequences we saw in the global list, like ‘1234567’ or ‘1234567890,’ also ranked high.”
A similar study was conducted by Bitwarden earlier this year which revealed that 72% of Gen Z participants reuse the same credentials across multiple platforms.