Could ‘England2022!’ Be The Most Popular Password of 2023?

With days until England face France in the quarter-finals of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, there is a growing feeling that after 56 years, football might just be ‘Coming Home’, that is if you are an England supporter. Here at Authlogics, we are a team of many nations, but we got thinking about the impact huge events of national significance can have on the password.

When most people create passwords, they will pick something memorable. It is for this reason 123456 has topped every annual poll of the most popular passwords since records began. However, away from number sequences or QWERTY (another perennial favourite) passwords tend to feature combinations of memorable moments and dates, whether that is a favourite film, holiday destination, the birthdays of children etc. So, I can only imagine if the password were ubiquitous in the 1960s how many of them would be ‘England1966!’

Sadly, too many England football memories in our recent past are to be forgotten, with the excellent of the final of the Euros and the magnificent triumph of the Lionesses this summer. However, should this England team lift the trophy on 18^th December it is likely that we will see a spike in passwords that share a commonality, whether it be ‘England2022’, ‘EnglandWorldCup22’ or other variations on the theme.

However, a word of warning. Do not let success on the football pitch be the reason for your organisation scoring an own goal. Changing passwords can be a very good thing, and essential if it relates to an account that has been breached, however, it should be done in adherence to the latest guidance and ideally within the framework of a Password Security Management (PSM) system. Here at Authlogics, we add more than one million records of compromised credentials to our Password Breach Database every day. And, football-related passwords are already popular! So much so that our database has over one million records based on team names alone.

A password breach can happen to anyone, whether a small business, large enterprise or even a hugely successful footballer, such as Neymar (rumoured to be paid £3.4million-per-month by Paris Saint Germain), who earlier this year had his bank accounts hacked as a result of a password breach.

Think of PSM as having a world-class best-back four and the world’s best goalkeeper. There is always a chance that something will slip through the defence, as attackers get smarter and bolder, however, if you are going to use passwords, you can have confidence that you have the best defence there is.