75% Use Same Password For Social Media & Email

wiredmikey writes "Over 250,000 user names, email addresses, and passwords used for social networking sites can easily be found online. A study of the data collected showed that 75 percent of social networking username and password samples collected online were identical to those used for email accounts. The password data was gathered from blogs, torrents, online collaboration services and other sources. It was found that 43 percent of the data was leaked from online collaboration tools while 21 percent of data was leaked from blog postings. Meanwhile, torrents and users of other social hubs were responsible for leaking 10 percent and 18 percent of user data respectively...."

Comments

Re:Use Password Hasher

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you ever need to sign in from a computer that doesn't have firefox, and that extension, installed.....you are stuck.

The danger of too many password requirements

[Kepesk]

Hah, my worst enemy is a system where a password has to have:
- at least two uppercase letters
- at least two lowercase letters
- at least two numbers
- at least two symbols
- at least 12 characters
- no characters that repeat
- nothing that's in your personal records
- nothing from the dictionary that's over three characters
- nothing from a FOREIGN dictionary that's over three characters
- at least three characters different from your last 10 passwords

No joke, I used a system for years that had those exact password requirements. Worse yet, I had to SUPPORT this system. Sometimes it would take a half hour for me to help someone figure out a new password.

There is a danger in creating a password system with two many requirements, because I know very few people who used that system who didn't have their password on a sticky note on their monitor.

Re:"Leaked"?

[ConceptJunkie]

It's pretty amazing just how much of the world is based on trust isn't it?

And it's equally tragic that it can't.

I don't think it's so much that people automatically trust each other, although that's certainly the case sometimes, it's more like it never occurs to too many people, unfortunately, that what they divulge could cause problems in the wrong hands.

For many years now, when someone asks me for information, my first thought is not to give the information, but to consider why I don't want to give it to that person. And I don't consider myself particularly paranoid with respect to what I share.

It gets tiring after awhile. Modern life in the 21st century requires a level of vigilance regarding information that probably never existed outside of the military, national security apparatus, law enforcement or some elements of business before a couple decades ago.

"Loose lips sink ships" was a common saying during World War II, but nowadays everyone must practice that level of vigilance over their own information all the time merely to be safe from criminals.