The research was carried out by Gates Cambridge scholar Joseph Bonneau and will be presented at a security conference held under the auspices of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in May.
Bonneau was given access to 70 million anonymous passwords through Yahoo! – the biggest sample to date – and, using statistical guessing metrics, trawled them for information, including demographic information and site usage characteristics.
He found that for all demographic groups password security was low, even where people had to register to pay by a debit or credit card. Proactive measures to prompt people to consider more secure passwords did not make any significant difference.
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Image: Computer Lab Credit: University of Cambridge
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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