We use passwords for everything, from streaming and social media to banking and work accounts. But with an average of 20 passwords per person, how careful are Americans when it comes to sharing their logins?
A new survey revealed 2 in 3 people admit to doing the bare minimum for password security. Key insights from the ThirdPartyTrust study:
- 95% say they’re comfortable sharing streaming passwords with friends & family
- 31% say they’ve been hacked, yet half (51%) use roughly the same password for everything
- One in 4 reset their passwords 1 or more times, per month, because they forget them.
What do your passwords look like? While more people are using automatic passwords filled with non-linear numbers and letters, many people still combine common phrases, birthday, addresses, and names of family members to construct their most common passwords.
Which is why our survey respondents noted that they can be a little embarrassed by their password choices. More than 1 in 10 report being embarrassed by their passwords, while more than 3 in 10 are embarrassed by old account usernames. So you’re not alone in feeling just a bit ashamed by your SassyLassy112 handle on MySpace and AIM back in the day.
“What people may not consider is that all of our personal practices around cybersecurity ultimately form the behaviors we carry into our work practices, even more so now that we work remotely or from home,” says Anders Norremo, founder and CEO of ThirdPartyTrust.
ThirdPartyTrust surveyed over 1,000 people for the study. The company is a a Chicago-based SaaS [software as a service] firm.
