And most people don’t change their password even after hearing about a breach, a survey finds
While nearly everybody is aware of the risks associated with poor password hygiene, most people don’t do anywhere near enough to keep attackers at bay, the third installment of the LastPass Psychology of Passwords Report has revealed.
As many as 9 in 10 respondents surveyed by the password manager purveyor acknowledged knowing that recycling the same password or using a variation of it across multiple account was risky. Still, two-thirds used the same password or a derivate for all their online accounts, which is actually an increase of 8 percentage points from the survey conducted in 2018. The new edition of the survey took place in March of this year and canvassed opinions from 3,250 people on various continents.
The report also reveals that 53% of respondents haven’t changed their password in the last year even after they heard about a breach in the news. Also, 4 in 10 people believe that having an easy-to-remember password is more important than a secure password. Apparently some take it a bit too far, since studies have shown that year after year, passwords such as “12345”, “123456” and “123456789” top the lists of the most popular passwords.
One of the reasons people don’t apply proper password hygiene is that they underestimate the risk. In fact, 4 in 10 think that their accounts aren’t worth the hacking effort. One thing to remember is that everyone is a target. Your information can be part of a people reusing passwords risky anyway
