World Password Day
As it is World Password Day, we thought it would be the perfect time to take a look at some research that examines online security behaviours of 3250 people around the world! World Password Day is a celebration to promote better password habits. We are looking at the research conducted by LastPass in 2020.
Cognitive Dissonance
One of the biggest trends was cognitive dissonance, people know what they should be doing but they don’t do it. 91% of people say that they know using the same or a variation of the same password is a security risk. However, when creating a password 66% of people say they always or mostly use the same password – this has increased by 8% since 2018.
In the UK, 64% of people reuse passwords due to the fear of forgetting them and 59% of them didn’t change their password even after hearing a breach reported in the news. By not changing the password, hackers may be able to enter more of your personal accounts.
Password reuse is risky, especially with malware and hacking incidents increasing due to COVID-19.
Am I a target?
Many people do not think they would be a target to hackers, with 41% of people thinking their accounts aren’t valuable to be worth a hacker’s time. This is wrong, your personal data can be very valuable! Even if some data, like your credit card number, gets them £10, that’s still worth a lot when stealing huge amounts of data. If you share your data with a brand and they get hacked, those hackers can make lots of money from selling your information on the dark web.
Here’s some quick facts:
58% haven’t changed their password in the last 12 months, even after hearing about a break in the news
22% could guess their significant others password
24% use sentimental information in their passwords
51% use multifactor authentication for personal accounts, but only 36% use it for work accounts.
67% said they trust fingerprint or facial recognition more than traditional text passwords
69% create stronger passwords for their financial accounts and 44% for email
60% use multi-factor authentication on their financial accounts and 40% for email
