Vietnam’s most popular Internet password remains ‘123456’ despite repeated warnings

The seventh annual Top 200 Most Common Passwords study found that 12 of Vietnam’s 20 most used passwords were basic number sequences, reflecting minimal change in user habits despite repeated warnings from security experts.

The password ‘123456’ ranked first with 1,899,982 uses, far ahead of second-place ‘123456789,’ which was used more than 858,000 times.

Other number-based variants, such as ‘12345678’ and ‘123123,’ also ranked among the most frequently used passwords, each with hundreds of thousands of uses.

Other common entries included ‘admin,’ ‘Demo@123,’ ‘kenboy00,’ and ‘abcd1234.’

Globally, ‘123456’ remained the most widely used password, followed by ‘admin’ and ‘12345678,’ highlighting continued reliance on easily guessed sequences vulnerable to attacks.

The study noted an increase in special characters in passwords, with 32 of the global top 200 including symbols, up from six last year.

However, many remained predictable variants such as ‘P@ssw0rd,’ ‘Admin@123,’ and ‘Abcd@1234.’

Variants of the word ‘password’ also appeared widely in multiple languages.

“Despite years of effort to improve digital literacy, the data shows only marginal improvements in password hygiene,” said Karolis Arbaciauskas, head of product at NordPass.

He warned that weak or reused passwords continue to play a role in roughly 80 percent of data breaches.

Arbaciauskas said the industry is gradually moving toward passkeys, a biometric-based system that eliminates the need for passwords, but stressed that strong passwords remain essential until adoption becomes widespread.