According to the study, 18% of the respondents were subject to account hacking attempts, while only few of them have efficient passwords. Only 30% of the internet users have different passwords for each of their online accounts, while one in ten users use the same password for all the online accounts.
At the same time, users don’t choose complex passwords that would protect them from account hacking. Only half of them (47%) use passwords that include lower case and upper case letters, while only 64% use letters and numeric characters, despite their belief that they need strong passwords for their online banking accounts (51%), e-mail accounts (39%) and online stores (37%).
According to the study, people reveal their passwords to other persons or write them down on notebooks, thus increasing their vulnerability.
“People make elementary mistakes when it comes to online passwords. The best passwords can’t be found in a dictionary. They have to be long, to include lower case and upper case letters, numeric characters and punctuation marks. But users usually have multiple online accounts so that it is not simple to remember a safe password for each of them. A password management solution ca help them keep and generate complex passwords, lowering the risk of account hacking,” said Andrei Mochola, head of Consumer Business Kaspersky Lab.