Unless you are one of those people who can construct a mind palace(Opens in a new window), you cannot stash a multitude of passwords in an ever-expanding series of rooms in your head. So you may have come up with a system for devising passwords or, worse, bought one of those books(Opens in a new window) that is very clearly labeled “Passwords” on the cover.
These are obviously not tactics recommended by password-manager purveyor LastPass. But the company was curious about the password habits of knowledge workers(Opens in a new window), so it surveyed 3,750 professionals in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Singapore, and India and published the results in its Psychology of Passwords report(Opens in a new window).
Survey respondents believed they had good password habits, with 73% saying theirs are solid and safe. But while 89% said they knew using the same password or a variation is a risk, 62% use the same password or a variation, 33% use stronger passwords for work than they do for their own accounts, and only 50% change their passwords after a breach.
Password vigilance depends on the type of account for most of those surveyed, though, with 69% saying they create stronger passwords for financial accounts, 52% for email accounts, and 32% for social media accounts.
Of course, LastPass recommends using a password manager. But 44% of survey respondents trust only themselves to manage their passwords.
What Is a Password Manager, and Why Do I Need One?
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