Computer users over the age of 55 employ passwords that are twice as secure as passwords used by those under 25 years old. A recent study conducted by Joseph Bonneau, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, analyzed almost 70 million passwords belonging to Yahoo users around the world. Ensuring that data was kept anonymous and passwords could not be tied to individual accounts, Bonneau looked at password strength alongside other data such as age and locale. Beyond the relationship between age and security, the researcher found that German and Korea speakers generally use the strongest passwords, and the presence of credit card data on a user’s account seemingly does not prompt that user to avoid weak passwords such as “123456.” Bonneau’s study was the largest of its kind, and he unveiled his findings at the Symposium on Security and Privacy in San Francisco, California earlier this month.
Your parents pick better passwords than you do
Updated Dec 19th, 2018 8:26PM EST
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Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.
His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.
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