A new analysis of global data leaks from the past three years has revealed a surprising trend: every 200th leaked password ended with “2024”. The study was based on worldwide databases containing billions of compromised or accidentally exposed passwords. The most common word was love, while 12345 remained the most popular numeric combination.
Experts note that about 10% of all leaked passwords contained numbers similar to years — from 1990 to 2025. Along with love, people often used country names, personal names, and other short combinations that are easy to guess.
The simplest passwords are extremely vulnerable. Security systems show that combinations like “123456” or “password” can be cracked in a fraction of a second. According to NordPass, almost every password in the top 10 can be breached instantly.
Specialists remind users that a strong password should include lowercase and uppercase letters, digits, special symbols and be at least 12 characters long. A combination of 18 different symbols might take hundreds of trillions of years to crack, while short ones take less than a second.
Despite the warnings, users continue to ignore the rules. Among the most popular passwords of 2024–2025 were “123456”, “1234566789”, “password”, “11111”, “secret”, and even variants with love — although they offer very little protection.