Football Password Power Rankings: Dashlane Unveils NFL, English Premier League Teams Used Most in Passwords

NEW YORK, Sept. 10, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Dashlane today released the findings of a new analysis of the most common sports teams found in passwords. With football season kicking off both in America and across the pond, researchers focused on team names from the National Football League and the English Premier League.

The research was conducted in conjunction with data provided by Gang Wang, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. Wang provided Dashlane's Analytics Team access to his database of 61.5 million anonymized passwords. The Analytics Team searched for password patterns across key words associated with team names and/or beloved mascots to establish the top team-related passwords in football.

The Philadelphia Eagles, winners of this year's Super Bowl, took the top spot for the NFL, while the Dallas Cowboys came in second. And while Neymar predicts Manchester City will win the Premier League this year, the team mentioned most in passwords was Liverpool, followed by London stalwarts Chelsea and Arsenal.

Unfortunately for fans of these teams, there are no bragging rights to be had; poor password habits like using dictionary words in passwords mean they're more likely to get hacked. 

How NFL fans played their passwords, in order of popularity:

1. Philadelphia Eagles
2. Dallas Cowboys
3. Oakland Raiders
4. Miami Dolphins
5. Pittsburgh Steelers
6. Chicago Bears
7. New York Giants
8. Los Angeles Rams
9. New Orleans Saints
10. Green Bay Packers
11. New England Patriots
12. Washington Redskins
13. Minnesota Vikings
14. Denver Broncos
15. Detroit Lions
16. Carolina Panthers
17. New York Jets
18. Arizona Cardinals
19. Tennessee Titans
20. Cleveland Browns
21. Baltimore Ravens
22. Indianapolis Colts
23. Atlanta Falcons
24. Los Angeles Chargers
25. San Francisco 49ers
26. Kansas City Chiefs
27. Cincinnati Bengals
28. Buffalo Bills
29. Jacksonville Jaguars
30. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
31. Seattle Seahawks
32. Houston Texans

Premier League squads in order of password popularity:

1. Liverpool
2. Chelsea
3. Arsenal
4. Manchester United
5. Southampton
6. West Ham United
7. Everton
8. Newcastle United
9. Tottenham Hotspur
10. Watford
11. A.F.C. Bournemouth
12. Cardiff City
13. Brighton & Hove Albion
14. Leicester City
15. Fulham
16. Burnley
17. Manchester City
18. Wolverhampton
19. Huddersfield Town
20. Crystal Palace

"Coming up with a password can be a very personal and emotional choice, and the data clearly shows consumers like to use the teams they support as part of their password habits," said Emmanuel Schalit, CEO of Dashlane. "As an avid soccer fan, I understand the urge to align your accounts with your favorite teams—but it's a major security risk. Along with using names, schools, and additional personally identifiable information, favorite teams should be avoided."

Best practices for password security
As a reminder, there are several things consumers can do to improve their password hygiene:

• Use a unique password for every online account
• Generate passwords that exceed the minimum of 8 characters
• Create passwords with a mix of case-sensitive letters, numbers, and special symbols
• Avoid using passwords that contain common phrases, slang, places, and names—including team names
• Use a password manager to help generate, store, and manage your passwords
• Only connect to an unsecured WiFi network using a VPN

For more information on the Football Password Power Rankings, visit: https://blog.dashlane.com/football-password-power-rankings/

Methodology 
Virginia Tech researchers led by Wang collected a number of publicly available password datasets from the internet in January 2017. The datasets were obtained from various online forums and data archives. The resulting 107 datasets (61.5 million passwords) allow the researchers to analyze how users reuse and modify their passwords across different online services. The goal of this research is to provide a deeper understanding of how weak passwords are generated and use the insights to drive the design of better password-management tools. More details can be found at https://people.cs.vt.edu/gangwang/pass.pdf

About Gang Wang
Gang Wang is an assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Tech. He obtained his doctorate from UC Santa Barbara in 2016 and his BE from Tsinghua University in 2010. His research interests include security and privacy, cybercrime measurements, and human factors in security. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award (NSF CAREER 2018), Google Faculty Research Award (2017) and SIGMETRICS Best Practical Paper Award (2013). His work has been covered by media outlets such as the New York Times, Boston Globe, CNN, MIT Technology Review, ACM TechNews, The Sun, and New Scientist.

About Dashlane
Dashlane simplifies and secures your digital identity—all your personal information that lives online. Across all platforms and devices, the intuitive Dashlane app automatically fills and stores passwords, personal data, and payment details to help you manage, monitor, and protect your digital identity. Available in 11 languages and trusted by 10+ million people in 180 countries (and growing), it's the complete, global solution for living safely and seamlessly online—at home, at work, and everywhere in between.

With offices in New York City and Paris, Dashlane has raised $54 million in venture funding to create a safe and effortless solution for all citizens of the digital world. Learn more at dashlane.com.

SOURCE Dashlane

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