VPN Study Says "Sayang" Is The Most Commonly Used Password In Malaysia

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According to the virtual private network (VPN) company, the effort is to raise awareness about the general public's poor cybersecurity and password selection practices.

They would like to remind everyone that "common passwords are bad passwords".

Looking at data from a third-party study of leaked passwords by Github user Ata Hakçıl, they said passwords that are easy to type are the most universal.

However, they also noted, "It becomes more interesting when cultural differences influence the use of bad passwords."

This is in the same way that "iloveyou" is one of the most common passwords in the United States and "passwort" — the German word for password — is in Germany.

"Sayang is a term used to express affection (such as love, sweetheart), or a missed opportunity," they explained on Facebook.

Meanwhile, in Italy, one of the most common passwords is "juventus", a popular Italian football team, and in France, "azerty" is common due to how French keyboards are arranged (as opposed to "qwerty").

In an online survey, they found that the average US adult uses the same password across six different websites or platforms, and even opts to use their own first or last name in the passwords they create.

As a word of advice, the company recommended users to use password managers and to also create passwords that are long, randomly made up of letters, numbers, symbols, and are unique for each and every account they may have.