Despite having a less robust cybersecurity infrastructure than the United States and Western Europe, countries such as Indonesia, India and Mexico are less likely to suffer identity theft, phishing attacks or large-scale data breaches than those regions.
Why? A study by ZeroBounce suggests it has a lot to do with password security. In other words, people in some countries tend not to create strong passwords or recycle the same ones across multiple applications.
Germany tops the list of countries where users are most likely to rely on simple logins such as “123456” — a habit that contributes significantly to security threats. Portugal ranked second, followed by Australia, Lithuania and Italy. The United States came in sixth.
“Most breaches aren’t caused by sophisticated attacks. They’re caused by weak passwords, reused credentials and the lack of basic protection, like multifactor authentication. It’s a global problem — and it’s entirely preventable,” says Vlad Cristescu, head of cybersecurity at ZeroBounce.
The company analyzed government-sourced credential breach data and calculated the number of vulnerable passwords per 100,000 residents across dozens of countries.
Password faux pas vary by country. In Italy, for example, soccer team names are a popular choice. In France, users often default to “azerty,” their keyboard layout.
And AI is eliminating the guesswork for hackers, who can now test billions of combinations in seconds.
Creating strong, unique passwords for each account and using a password manager to keep them organized, along with multifactor authentication, can go a long way toward protecting your accounts.
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