According to a recent research,  numeric combination of '123456' was the most common password of 2016, followed by '123456789' and 'qwerty' in the year 2016.

The study also found that four of the top 10 passwords on the list are six characters or shorter. Passwords '12345678', '111111', '1234567890', '1234567', 'password', '123123', '987654321' were among the top ten list.

"This is stunning in light of the fact that, as we have reported, today's brute-force cracking software and hardware can unscramble those passwords in seconds," according to the US-based password management company Keeper Security.

"Website operators that permit such flimsy protection are either reckless or lazy," the company said.

"Nearly 17 percent of users are safeguarding their accounts with '123456'. What really perplexed us is that so many website operators are not enforcing password security best practices," it said.

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BY M. DIVYA SRI