What Kasperskyâ€™s Laboratory think about online passwords

10th March 2007

More than half of web-surfers use from one to four passwords in the presence of 20 bank and e-mail accounts â€“ this information is reported in research carried out by Kasperskyâ€™s Lab. The company carried out the poll of 150 users. Two-thirds of them had to ten accounts requiring passwords, and 23% of respondents worked with more than 20 accounts. The research revealed that only 9% of the respondents use 20 different passwords for 20 different accounts. The results were commented as "giving concernâ€ Throughout the world, identity theft, especially credit card numbers and passwords for access to different accounts is growing: in the United States since 2003, the number of such thefts has increased by 50% and in the United Kingdom they cost users and services more than Â£ 1.7 billion each year. According to the Kasperskyâ€™s Laboratory, this growth of thefts is encouraged considerably by popularity of social portals for entering which people use the same passwords and logins as for access to other services. Also in the study the way of choosing passwords was strongly criticized â€“ names of pets, the number of a car, date of birth or the name of a favorite song.