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Bad News for OpenID: People Still Using Same Password Everywhere Written by Sarah Perez / February 24, 2009 5:50 AM / 31 Comments « Prior Post Next Post » A new survey from Gartner Research delivers some bad news regarding our online security practices: two-thirds of U.S. consumers use the same one or two passwords for all the websites they access. And they like it that way. Although people claim they're concerned about security, they still tend to use unsafe password management techniques rather than exploring new methods - be they new hardware, software, or new authentication frameworks like OpenID. Always Use the Same Password? You're Not Alone Gartner's survey of 4000 U.S. adults in September 2008, once again demonstrated people's tendencies to opt for convenience over security. It's a trend that has stayed fairly consistent over the years despite the fact that an increasing amount of activity occurs online these days thanks to the growth of cloud computing. According to Gregg Kreizman, research director at Gartner, "most consumers want to continue managing their passwords the way they do now." But the way they do now is nothing to brag about. It generally consists of one or two passwords which the consumer uses on every website they encounter. What should be done about this? According to Kreizman, online product and service vendors should redouble their marketing efforts to illustrate the advantages and practicality of routine and stronger authentication for consumers. Another analyst, Avivah Litan, also notes that "enterprises with consumer-facing websites that require stronger controls than weak password authentication alone should continue to augment passwords with complementary mechanisms, such as device identification, geolocation and transaction verification." Elephant in the Room: Facebook Connect While these findings are relatively unsurprising, the study highlights one of the top issues when it comes to security: the human factor. For most peopl

Survey reveals 30 percent of India's top 40 banks were victims of phishing attacks in the past year. Only 57 percent have formal plan to drive user awareness about fraud.

Internet users still using same password for all Web sites by Steve Ragan - Mar 11 2009, 17:10 Internet users still using the same password for all the sites they visit. (IMG:J.Anderson) Internet users still using the same password for all the sites they visit. (IMG:J.Anderson) Sophos is reporting that the results of one of their online surveys show that only 19 percent of those who took it are properly using passwords. Properly, meaning using separate passwords for most of the sites they need to log in to. However, the downside to these numbers is that they are based on a small sample -- quantify them and assume a few things, and they are downright scary. The survey offered by Sophos was taken by 676 people. Of those users who took the survey, 48 percent said they "use a few different passwords," while 33 percent said "Yes all the time", and 19 percent said "No never," when asked, "Do you use the same password for multiple websites?" So let's play with these numbers by nit-picking on the 33 percent who use the same password for everything. There are 303,824,646 people in the United States, based on a 2008 U.S. Census. Of that number, 72.5 percent of them are online, that's 220,141,969 Internet users (source: www.internetworldstats.com). If the Internet users in the U.S. took the Sophos survey with the same responses, yielding the same statistical breakdown, then 72,646,850 users are using the same password day in and day out on every site that requires one. That number is far more frightening than 223, which equates to the number people who make up the 33 percent in the Sophos survey. If you altered the hypothetical numbers even more, replacing the 33 percent with seven percent, then that means 15,409,940 Internet users surf the Web using the same password for everything, still a frightening and awful number. What if you take it down next to nothing, to one percent, a single percent of Internet users in the U.S., that number is still a frig

An article that provides a step by step guide to prevent users from getting their identity stolen