Majority of People Reuse the Same Password on Multiple Accounts, Research Finds

New research has shown that most people tend to reuse passwords from one account to another despite being aware of data breaches and other security incidents.

The fact that people don’t usually employ the best cybersecurity practices is not something new. It’s actually one of the most significant security issues right now and one of the reasons why hackers and other threat actors do what they do. Criminals know that most people have poor security habits and are always trying to exploit any weakness.

A new survey from TechRadar and OnePulse underlined this problem and uncovered a hard reality. Despite all the news about data breaches and other security incidents, people’s bad habits don’t seem to change. You would expect to see some improvement as users learn how to stay safe online, but in practice, those improvements don’t exist.

According to the survey, over 60 percent of the respondents said they reuse the same password across multiple accounts. The reasons remain the same, as 40 percent don’t want to remember multiple passwords, and 27% said that they don’t think they’re in danger of being hacked, so using unique passwords seems like a waste of time.

One of the recent improvements in the cybersecurity ecosystem was the rise of password managers, dedicated apps designed to help people use unique and robust passwords without needing to remember them.

Even so, more than 65 percent of people continue to create their own passwords instead of relying on a password manager, with some even turning to online generators.

Of course, there is also the problem of sharing passwords between work and personal life. The survey found that around 30% will sometimes use the same password in both situations, and 20% said that they often do so. Only 34 percent of users don’t share credentials between the two worlds.

This practice is hazardous because a data breach in some commercial online accounts could also compromise the work password, which puts the company in danger.

If you want to make sure that your passwords are in a safe place, you can check out the Bitdefender Password Manager, a multi-platform service that helps you store and organize all your online passwords. It supports all major browsers and has dedicated mobile apps for Android and iOS.