Using an easy-to-remember password is convenient but risky. And if people have to choose...well, they generally choose convenience. According to Statista, 123456, picture1, password, 111111 and 123123 were the world's most common passwords in 2020; all of which could be cracked in less than a second by bots. However, as Statista's Katherina Buchholz notes, even little tweaks can make passwords a lot more robust: "adding even one upper case letter to a password can already dramatically alter its potential. In the case of an 8-character password, it can now be broken in 22 minutes instead of instantaneously in one second...A 12-character password with one uppercase letter, one number and one symbol is almost unbreakable, taking a computer 34,000 years to crack."
How? Combinations and permutations. There are 26 lower case letters in the English alphabet. A password of eight characters has 26^8 or ~209 billion possible combinations. Adding the uppercase, we already arrive at 52^8 or ~53.5 trillion combinations. With the numbers (0-9) in there, it’s 62^8 or 218 trillion combinations. Symbols add another great potential for security, but since only the handful displayed on computer keyboards are convenient to use, this ups the number of combinations once more to around 90^8 or 430 trillion combinations.
If you're still wondering how much of an effort you need to make, the below graphic provides a useful convenience-risk guide.
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