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Nearly 40% of Americans Would Give Up Sex For Better Online Security, Survey Finds (huffingtonpost.com)
A recent survey of over 2,000 adults conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Dashlane, a "leader in online identity and password management," found that nearly 40 percent of Americans would give up sex for an entire year if it meant they'd never have to worry about being hacked. Huffington Post reports: 40 percent of people also said they'd give up their favorite food for one month in the name of peace of mind online. If all of this sounds drastic, the truth is that it probably is. The single biggest thing people can do to help keep their online identity safe is probably the easiest -- a solid password. 10 years ago, anti-virus was the primary method of online security. But since the Internet has left the desktop and is on laptops, tablets, and cell phones, and since so many people now use the cloud for backing up their sensitive data, following proper password protocol is critical. Of course, having a solid password doesn't do a lot of good if you're giving it out to people. And nearly 50% of people have shared a password to an e-mail account or to an account like Netflix with a friend or had a friend share theirs (which is a surprisingly high number when you consider that 4 out of 10 people said that sharing an online social media password was more intimate than sex). A look at the password habits of Americans showed that about 30% have used a pet's name, almost 25% have used a family member's name, 21% a birthday, and 10% each have used an anniversary, a sports team, an address, or a phone number. So if you just know a few basic, personal details about someone, you've got a decent chance at cracking their password. The study also revealed some interesting data in that younger Americans (those age 18 to 34) who grew up online are far more trusting with passwords than older generations, and married people are less likely to part with passwords than single people.
After 20 years working in internet security, the headline struck me as bullshit. Just yesterday when I told a guy that making his DVR accessible via the internet would mean hackers would likely get into it, his response was "I don't care". That's about typical. So why would this survey come up with that result? The bottom section of the article begins with:
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Dashlane makes identity and checkouts simple with its password manager and secure digital wallet app. Dashlane allows its users to securely manage passwords
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And according to a survey conducted by McDonald's, their burgers are wonderful.
And what is this supposed to actually mean? It's just a clickbait study that doesn't really tell us a damned thing that's actually useful.
I bet 40% of the people who read this would be willing to punch the author of the study in the face for a chocolate bar, too.
This study means absolutely nothing other than showing us that the people who visit Dashlane's site and use their products most likely either don't care or get any sex and have no problem giving it up for better online security. That's like polling Slashdot about which Mp3 player is better (Zune or iPod).
I bet if they sampled 2000 people who read the Huffpost or some other more mixed MSM site will get a vastly different answer than what this bunk poll found.
"The single biggest thing people can do to help keep their online identity safe is probably the easiest -- a solid password."
Fucking cannot be absolutely more wrong on this one. Firstly, you "shouldn't" re-use passwords. So it isn't a "solid password", but instead a "solid password per web site". But what *IS* a solid password? That's right. Complex as fuck shit to remember. Upper, lower, number, specials, with a minimum and maximum that isn't even remotely consistent from web site to web site.
You aren't thinking about the real world here, you're thinking like a programmer.
Yes, a long and complex password is better from a cryptographic view, but noone will ever remember 200+ characters. /.), a secure and long password for critical sites that you access through special services (like your email account), and possibly a third medium security password for sensitive sites (like online gaming where your credit card is involved). This allows you to remember the passwords, and if a low/medium-risk password should be compromised, it doesn't matter so much. Better yet, since you only have three passwords to keep track of, you can make them a bit tougher.
If you want to be safe, then you need a simple, reusable password for low-risk sites (forum accounts like
This stuff is actually something everyday people can use in the real world.
What's the point in polling a population who believe in angels, has but the slightest knowledge of history and geography and is almost illiterate in science?
40% of Americans probably couldn't understand what "nearly 40% of Americans" even means.
We could as well discuss the percentage of toddlers who think their mum should be Queen of America.
Team Password Manager (http://teampasswordmanager.com/)is self hosted and has a Chrome extension, and free for two users.
So you have to trust a closed source program, and run it on a server with PHP, IconCube, MySQL (with ALL privileges, no separation between user and admin rights) and Apache, and poke a hole in your firewall to reach its web server? That's increasing security?
Never mind the mind boggling idea of using a browser extension to give your browser a backdoor into it to increase convenience.