Older people, more secure passwords

Despite the digital savvy of younger generations, people over age 55 years pick passwords that are twice as secure as those chosen by those under 25, according to a new study.

“There is a general trend towards better password selection with users’ age,” University of Cambridge computer scientist, Joseph Bonneau, wrote in his paper.

But before older web-surfers start crowing, they should take note of Mr Bonneau’s larger conclusion: no one makes passwords that are secure enough, regardless of age.

“The most troubling finding of our study is how little password distributions seem to vary … with effective security varying by no more than a few bits,” he wrote.

His study, which was presented at the 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, examined the passwords of nearly 70 million Yahoo! users without having access to their accounts.

On average, Mr Bonneau found user-chosen passwords could be cracked in  about 1,000 attempts.

According to New Scientist, Mr Bonneau suggested people could be assigned random, nine-digit numbers instead, which would offer  1,000-times more security on average.

“I think it’s reasonable to expect people to have the capacity to remember that, because they do it for phone numbers,” he said.

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