Understanding the types of inappropriate practices that emerge from imposing security constraints on password creation is one among many aspects about password usage that might inform and improve password-based authentication procedures. Other aspects that have been the focus of research are the source, composition, and number of passwords. A survey in which 218 young adults were inquired about the source of their passwords (e.g., bank or e-mail accounts), the information contained in each password and to whom it might refer (e.g., the user’s own name or birth date), and the number of passwords, revealed that the vast majority of the participants (97%) used passwords to access their email account, followed by voice mail (86%) and ATMs (83%). Regarding password composition, roughly half of the passwords (53%) contained information about a name or a date, and most of the passwords (74%) referred to either the participants themselves or their relatives. Moreover, although respondents reported using 8.2 passwords on average, the average number of unique passwords was actually 4.5, which shows that, on average, each unique password is reused roughly once (e.g., people might use the same password to access an e-mail account and a voice mail).
This survey was an important step in comprehending password users’ behavior. Nevertheless, by surveying a homogeneous sample with respect to age and education (all participants were undergraduate students enrolled in a Psychology course); it was not possible to make inferences about the impact of factors such as age and education on password usage. Thus, since it is well known that older adults typically show a general decline in memory performance, especially in tasks involving free and cued recall, questions can be raised about whether older adults might show higher rates of passwords forgetting relative to younger adults. Similarly, even though fewer years of education has been shown to be associated with memory disadvantages, as faster age-related memory decline, it is currently unknown whether years of education influences password usage performance. Assuming that there is an increasing amount of password users worldwide (since passwords are required to log in email accounts, bank accounts, credit card accounts, and so on), and most current password users do not posses college education (approximately 6.7% of the global population has a college degree), it is important to look into the typical password-use habits and password-related memory issues of individuals without such higher education in order to draw a more accurate picture regarding password usage in the general population.
Therefore, in the present study we surveyed the password usage in different age groups with different education levels in order to investigate the password usage factors previously reported in a more diverse sample. We expected that differences in password usage would be evident across age and education level. More specifically, based on findings from extensive prior studies on memory and aging, we expected that older adults would report a higher rate of forgotten passwords, an expectation that was surprisingly unconfirmed.
Denise Ranghetti Pilar1, Antonio Jaeger, Carlos F. A. Gomes, Lilian Milnitsky Stein. Department of Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America.
Pages: 1 · 2
More Articles
- National Institutes of Health: Common Misconceptions About Vitamins and Minerals
- National Institutes of Health: COVID-19 Vaccines Linked to Small Increase in Menstrual Cycle Length
- Earnings for Full-time, Year-round workers: Women at Work From the US Census Bureau
- Scientific American: How Reliable Are the Memories of Sexual Assault Victims? The Expert Testimony Excluded from the Kavanaugh Hearing
- The Great Recession: Gen X Rebounds as the Only Generation to Recover the Wealth Lost After the Housing Crash
- My New Roommates, Alexa and Google Home
- Improving People’s Relationships with Technology and With Fellow Humans
- Tracy K. Smith, the New Poet Laureate: "Her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and memory to life"
- Wisdom, The Oldest Living Banded Bird, Returns to Wildlife Refuge
- Puzzling: Jumbled Words, Anagrams, Crosswords, Cryptograms, Acrostics, I Love Them All