Iowa Politics with Jeff Stein -- Wed. Aug. 26, 2026

And the password is... I'm Jeff Stein with today's Iowa Politics Report.

Back in the old days, a password was something you had to remember as a child in order to get into a tree fort or neighborhood clubhouse.

Or you might remember it as a classic game show, hosted by Alan Ludden.

Well these days passwords are tied to anything we do online.

At first we were cautioned to use things we'd remember.

Now we're cautioned to make up collections of letters, numbers and symbols that Nairdwells could never crack.

But it seems that some of us haven't quite gotten the message.

Insurance experts at the Allen Boswell Group analyzed password data from a site identifying hundreds of millions of passwords exposed in data breaches.

The goal was to find the most common password choices used online.

Well, apparently despite constant warnings against it, it appears the most common password of those being hacked is 123456.

That showed up nearly 210 million times.

And from the You Can't Make This Stuff Up department, the password 123456789 was the second most common showing up 81 million times, followed not surprisingly by the password 12345678 in third place, more than 70 million times.

No, I am not kidding.

Nor am I kidding that in fourth place of most commonly hacked passwords is the word password, which still showed up more than 52 million times.

The analysts also broke down passwords by category, including sports teams.

Pittsburgh Steelers as a password is seventh among sports teams, with Philadelphia Eagles in ninth and Dallas Cowboys in tenth.

And it goes on like this, and while some of it is humorous, Superman is the most common fictional character password choice, for example.

There is a financial side to this.

The FBI's latest internet crime report found suspected internet crime losses was more than $16 billion in 2024 alone, up 33% from the year before.

It appears the password, therefore,

is caution.

And that's the Iowa Politics Report for Wednesday, August 26th on Twitter, Instagram, Gitter, Threads and Truth Social at Iowa Politics.

I'm Jeff Stein on News Talk 1540, KXEL.