A new survey from password management app developer LastPass found that 95 percent of Americans have shared anywhere from one to six passwords with their friends or family. And lack of awareness is not to blame — 73 percent of those surveyed admitted that they share their passwords even though they are aware of the risks.
“Nearly all aspects of our lives have some online component and when you bring password sharing into the mix, all of that sensitive information is instantly compromised,” said LastPass Vice President Joe Siegrist to BGR .
The survey also found that 59 percent of those surveyed admitted to reusing passwords on different platforms.
Earlier this year, SplashData revealed their annual list of the most common passwords. The toppers this year are unchanged with “123456” at number one and “password” at number two, followed by “12345678,” “qwerty,” and “12345.” Interestingly enough, there are sci-fi pop culture passwords in the top 25 list, as “starwars” and “solo” made the list -- the latter presumably is a reference to Han Solo.
“We have seen an effort by many people to be more secure by adding characters to passwords, but if these longer passwords are based on simple patterns they will put you in just as much risk of having your identity stolen by hackers,” said Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData, in a statement via SplashData’s blog, TeamsID. “As we see on the list, using common sports and pop culture terms is also a bad idea. We hope that with more publicity about how risky it is to use weak passwords, more people will take steps to strengthen their passwords and, most importantly, use different passwords for different websites.”
The experts at SplashData recommend creating a password with 12 characters and mixed character types and avoiding using the same password at different websites.
