Have you changed your passwords lately?
64% of people use the same password for some, or all, of their online accounts, while only 21% use a different password for each account.
Other recent survey’s find:
– 21% of respondents said that they used personal information such as their favorite football team, their pet’s name or birthdays when creating passwords. This is particularly risky because this type of information can often be found on social media sites.
– 43% said that the number of different passwords that they had to remember was ‘overwhelming’ and 30% said they had at least 10 different accounts.
– 8% said that trying to remember all their passwords was more stressful than a divorce or changing jobs.
– 40% said that they ‘remembered’ their passwords, followed by 20% who preferred to write them down on a piece of paper.
Only a few (8%) said that they use a password manager, a single sign-on service like Facebook or Google (4%) or kept them on a document in the cloud (1%).
We suggest the following when choosing passwords:
- Each password should be different for each account.
- Passwords should be at least eight characters long and contain special characters, lowercase and uppercase alphabetic characters, numbers and symbols if permitted.
- Use Two Factor Authentication when Possible
- Change passwords often
- Consider a password manager