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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.
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
I'm 64. 65 is elderly.
Don't step on the baby.
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.
> The older group are probably more likely to have their passwords written down on sticky notes under their keyboards, or stuck to their monitors.
The day malware can lift your keyboard to look, the seniors are going to be in a lot of trouble.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
...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.
More seriously, I've decided elderly is a state of mind. Someone else's mind.
Don't step on the baby.