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Elderly Use More Secure Passwords Than Millennials, Says Report (qz.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Quartz: A report released May 24 by Gigya surveyed 4,000 adults in the U.S. and U.K. and found that 18- to 34-year-olds are more likely to use bad passwords and report their online accounts being compromised. The majority of respondents ages 51 to 69 say they completely steer away from easily cracked passwords like "password," "1234," or birthdays, while two-thirds of those in the 18-to-34 age bracket were caught using those kind of terms. Quartz writes, "The diligence of the older group could help explain why 82% of respondents in this age range did not report having had any of their online accounts compromised in the past year. In contrast, 35% of respondents between 18 and 34 said at least one of their accounts was hacked within the last 12 months, twice the rate of those aged 51 to 69."
Damn.
51-69 is elderly???? Come on who wrote this.... 75 maybe, 80 even. But 50-60 is not.
I strongly suspect that 'millennials' have password protected accounts at far more places online than 51+ people. At that point it doesn't matter how strong your password is, but which shitty service stores your password as unsalted MD5 and lets the intern leave the remote login session active
The sixty-year old guy's password: "NowIsTheWinterOfOurDiscontent"
The thirty-year-old guy's password: "trumpsucks" ("trumpsucksbigtime" if you're lucky).
Ezekiel 23:20
The older group are probably more likely to have their passwords written down on sticky notes under their keyboards, or stuck to their monitors.
Furthermore, the percent of hacked accounts would be hard to solve, as many younger folk are likely signed up to way more sites and services using the same password across the board. This would easier intrusion into the more secured sites.
There is so much wrong with that as to be comical.
When do you ever hear about insecure passwords being compromised? That doesn't happen. They get leaked. Constantly. But not guessed, not when they can be leaked or stolen.
So how does a super-ultra-secure password help?
And then we have this odd bit of math, that 18% of the >51 age range had compromised accounts, while less than double that, 35%, of the youngest range had. Probably, but unclear because the report requires providing PII, while having four times more accounts. I'd certainly bet that the 18-to-34 age bracket has more than double the account count of the compu-geysers. (I say as someone just squeaking below that bar.)
Which would imply that, mathematically, insecure passwords are more secure. Go figure.
Millenials are the worst!
Also, women, foreigners, minorities, point-haired bosses, liberal arts majors, and really anybody who isn't an old white man with an interest in science/math! They're all the worst!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I'm nearly 60, s'pose that makes me nearly elderly.
I pick my passwords using
pwgen -y
and select from a screen full of 'memorable' passwords
Go well
...old people are on average more responsible than young people! Groundbreaking research!
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
but it's still not something anyone is gonna spend any time cracking
The misconception is that people think you can 'crack a password'.
You can't.
If you try to log on on any system and fail several times it shuts you out.
So, cracking a password is only possible if the password is stored on a system, likely hashed or encrypted, and leaks. If your system is leaking password files, then you have much bigger issues than weak passwords.
See the linkedin disaster.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
...we know more words.
My password "cheat sheet" purposely has typos in them, and don't explicitly say what they go to.
.docx file, not printed on paper.)
My memory is good enough to know them by heart most of the time, but for some seldom used ones, just looking at my notes is enough to remind ME. I wouldn't want to have someone take my crib notes, but the casual burglar isn't likely to be sober long enough or be patient enough to try and figure out my mess-o-letters.
(oh, and it is in an encrypted
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I'm elderly and my password is so strong that I forget it in 2009 and haven't been able to log in to anything since.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Alas, sometimes you can't re-use (or even use logical variations) due to the retarded disparity in password policies (required characters for some sites are forbidden on others...).
The worst are the sites that make you have such a complicated password there is no way you can remember it.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
>"Elderly Use More Secure Passwords Than Millennials[...]The majority of respondents ages 51 to 69 say they completely steer away from easily cracked passwords"
Under what/whose definition is a 51-year-old "elderly"??? Was this title written by a 20-year-old or something? Even 60 is hardly "elderly". And why are there only two groups- 18-34 and 51-69? They are not equal spans? What happened to 35-50?
Yeesh
Chrono-Americans use better passwords because unlike the young, they write everything down. A user who never takes her laptop to Starbucks or to work is okay with setting up difficult passwords and then referring to a list in the silverware drawer when her grandchildren need to connect to the WiFi.