{"id":10215,"date":"2018-01-24T09:57:40","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T14:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?p=10215"},"modified":"2019-10-02T15:24:42","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T11:24:42","slug":"password-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/password-dilemma\/10215\/","title":{"rendered":"The password dilemma: simple and crackable, or strong and forgettable?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whether we are talking online shopping or bill paying, and don\u2019t forget social networking, our modern lives require accounts, dozens of them. Each service tells you to come up with login and password, and every time the question arises: What should you use? And everyone has their own solution for that.\"\"<\/p>\n

The password dilemma<\/h2>\n

Most people know full well that passwords are the first line of defense against cybercriminals<\/a>. And we have repeatedly<\/a> blogged<\/a> about the importance of strong passwords \u2014 long and including special characters, numbers, and upper- and lowercase letters. Moreover, each account needs a unique password; reusing passwords is unacceptable.<\/p>\n

However, the stronger the password, the easier it is to forget. And that can cause problems, as you surely know. As a result, lots of people decide not to bother and create one password for all sites, or even use their own name and date of birth as passwords. Naturally, this makes their data easy prey.<\/p>\n

Kaspersky Lab carried out a study<\/a> to find out which password selection strategy is most common among users and why.<\/p>\n

So strong even I can\u2019t sign in<\/h3>\n

Unique and complex passwords are a good thing, of course. People use them most frequently for bank accounts (63%), some payment systems (42%), and online stores (41%). But as we already said, such passwords are difficult to remember, and losing access to your mobile bank can be a real pain.<\/p>\n

It would seem logical, then, to make a note of such passwords so as not to forget them. However, half of those polled do not store password memos in a particularly safe place. And even the strongest password in the world won\u2019t protect you if an attacker finds it written down. There are no absolutely safe places for keeping passwords, unless they happen to be encrypted at the same time. But then you have to remember the cipher\u2026.<\/p>\n

Weak and memorable<\/h3>\n

In an attempt to escape the dreaded \u201cincorrect password\u201d message, many users opt for convenience over security. To avoid the pitfalls of memorizing multiple passwords, about 10% of users choose the same one for all sites, thereby inviting cybercrooks to hack into not one, but all of their accounts in one go.<\/p>\n

The invitation is warmly received: In the last year alone, 17% of respondents reported a hacking attempt on at least one account. The most popular targets were e-mail accounts (41% of all cases), social media (37%), and banks and online stores (18% each).<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t despair just yet<\/h3>\n

Instead of trying to find a balance between convenience and security, you can kill two birds with one stone by installing Kaspersky Password Manager<\/a>, which stores all of your account details in a safe place. You\u2019ll need to remember just one master password; the service handles the rest. What\u2019s more, it can generate secure passwords that are very difficult to brute force \u2014 and enter them for you on demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simple passwords are easy to crack, complex ones hard to remember. Using one strong password for all logins isn’t safe. What\u2019s the solution?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":14132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[352,1021,405,187,97],"class_list":{"0":"post-10215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tips","8":"tag-kaspersky-lab","9":"tag-kaspersky-password-manager","10":"tag-password-manager","11":"tag-passwords","12":"tag-security-2"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"en-ae","url":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/password-dilemma\/10215\/"},{"hreflang":"en-in","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.in\/blog\/password-dilemma\/12299\/"},{"hreflang":"ar","url":"https:\/\/me.kaspersky.com\/blog\/password-dilemma\/6030\/"},{"hreflang":"en-us","url":"https:\/\/usa.kaspersky.com\/blog\/password-dilemma\/14482\/"},{"hreflang":"en-gb","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/password-dilemma\/12717\/"},{"hreflang":"es-mx","url":"https:\/\/latam.kaspersky.com\/blog\/password-dilemma\/12374\/"},{"hreflang":"es","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.es\/blog\/password-dilemma\/15202\/"},{"hreflang":"it","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.it\/blog\/password-dilemma\/14956\/"},{"hreflang":"ru","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.ru\/blog\/password-dilemma\/19523\/"},{"hreflang":"tr","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.tr\/blog\/password-dilemma\/4680\/"},{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/password-dilemma\/20821\/"},{"hreflang":"pl","url":"https:\/\/plblog.kaspersky.com\/password-dilemma\/8837\/"},{"hreflang":"de","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.de\/blog\/password-dilemma\/15752\/"},{"hreflang":"ja","url":"https:\/\/blog.kaspersky.co.jp\/password-dilemma\/19311\/"},{"hreflang":"nl","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.nl\/blog\/password-dilemma\/23616\/"},{"hreflang":"en-au","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.au\/blog\/password-dilemma\/19430\/"},{"hreflang":"en-za","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/password-dilemma\/19431\/"}],"acf":[],"banners":"","maintag":{"url":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/tag\/passwords\/","name":"passwords"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10215"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14131,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10215\/revisions\/14131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}