Deutsche Telekom report: Football terms top insecure password rankings

An analysis by Deutsche Telekom of stolen login credentials spanning over a decade reveals that football club names are frequently used in weak passwords. The ranking shows that the combination ‘schalke04’ appeared 539,093 times in leaked datasets, making it a prominent entry in the negative ranking of insecure passwords. Other common variations include ‘Schalke04’ and ‘fcschalke04’.

Globally, ‘schalke04’ was registered over 600,000 times, ranking 11th among all terms, ahead of international examples like ‘liverpool1’. Other German clubs appearing in the data include Hannover 96, Borussia Dortmund, Hamburg, Werder Bremen, and FC Bayern Munich. However, the overall top spots in the global ranking are held by generic sequences such as ‘abc123’ and ‘password1’.

Telekom security expert Thomas Tschersich advised users to reconsider their password choices, noting that while passwords remain a primary method for protecting sensitive information, the use of predictable terms poses a significant security risk.