Men far worse than women on password security

Women are more password savvy than blokes, according to a new survey. A survey on security awareness by PC Tools found that 47 per cent of men use the same password for every website they visit, compared to just a quarter (26 per cent) of women who use the same insecure practice. Nearly two-thirds of men polled said they …

[Anonymous Coward]

(untitled)

Ah good. It means the bad guys have easier targets than me to aim at then.

[Anonymous Coward]

surveys..

And what percentage of tech-savvy blokes that know not to use the same password for everything, etc, didn't bother filling in the survey?

[Marvin the Martian]

As well as (1), also:

Women turn out to be better at guessing the intent of questions and giving the required answer. Fact.

For (a representative) example, when the missus makes a remark about nice weather, she has to repeat increasingly hostile variations of it for 2-3hours until I get the point that my sunday off, staying in and pottering about, is not to be. By which time it's raining but the death march will still be held.

[SmallYellowFuzzyDuck, how pweety!]

My easy solution

I just ask my wife to memorise my passwords for me!

"Hey wife! Come and look at this, this is the second time this month I have gone overdrawn, but I don't remember buying all this make up online"

"Anyhow, yes you can visit your friend tonight, could you tell me the password for my steam train enthusiasts website, you know the one with the big tits section, umm, I mean something else connected with trains"

My option wasn't in the list so all I got was this lousy coat.

[JASR]

Moderatrix

Does the Moderatrix also check for Asterix usage? Is she refering to Vitalstatistix with regard to the Simpsons? Can she deal with the Cacofonix of Flamers this article could induce, or has El Reg got a Fulliautomatix Unhygenix filter on? Does she normally feel a bit of editting Dogmatix when perusing comments? Would she like an Obelix erected in her honour for dealing with it all? Oh I do hope she's not a bit Geriatrix. Answers on a Postaldistrix to ? And to think I did all this Justforkix.

[Anonymous Coward]

Knickers N Passwords

Women change their knickers everyday - Real men do not -

Its the same with passwords

Its a man thing, just deal with it and move on.

Simples

[Owen Milton]

Hummm...

First I'll take an order of numbers 2 and 6, just because they are amusing when combined.

Now in general I'd question the accuracy of taking a sample of 4500 all from visitors to one website, and then projecting it forward to broad terms like Men, Women or French. Kinda like Option 1, we have too small a sample size to get meaningful results.

However if it's a company that sells password management tools, security software and such I'd say it was a perfect survey, conveying Exactly the right message. Amazing how that can happen.

[EddieD]

You missed the coda on the headline

....but women aren't that much better...

No-one I know has particularly good practice on their personal security. I don't.

And don't ask about the results when I used a very basic security tool (lophtcrack) to check the password security of the former users on the network we had previously. More than half had used their names, or identity numbers. Marvellous.

[Dino]

4

4 !! (stilll have to type something grrrr)

[Anonymous Coward]

Proves the old saying

If you want a job doing properly get a woman to do it.

As for insta-troll 4, I can confirm yes we do, though not always.........

[Jay Castle]

Option 2, please.....

That's not true! It's just another example of misandry pushed by a militant feminist agenda, and I for one welcome our saggy-breasted, hemp-wearing overladies!!

[pc]

A little test..

Anyone in El Reg tempted to exploit those credentials you have on file for us?

Your Facebook is belong to the Moderatrix!

[david willis]

>> Moderatrix

Good rant..

Quiet afternoon then?

[Dan 10]

Why title?

Nice pre-emptive strike, Sarah!

However, in my experience an inordinate number of women involve Tigger in their passwords, dunno why.

[Niall 1]

your lady's monthly inconvenience

That would be the inconvenience of my employer transfering money into my bank account, instead of directly into hers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow me to post the following copypasta replies::

1) That's not true! My missus uses the same password for everything and will not be told. This isolated example clearly illustrates the real truth. So shut up.

2) That's not true! It's just another example of misandry pushed by a militant feminist agenda, and I for one am sick of it. We have had thousands of years of female oppression. When are men going to take a stand?

4) Women wear knickers. I have seen.

6) What's that bit from The Simpsons about statistics?

But seriously, out of the people whose passwords I know at least one of, they ALL use them for more than one site/application, and the women all use weak single word passwords with no numbers or symbols.

Even if a single password is used, it being something like 'EF8EWfw__42*k' makes it more secure than having one site as 'password', one site as 'secret', one as 'login', etc.

Paris because I doubt her passwords are strong... Although she does seem to let anyone in anyway

[Sir Sham Cad]

Let me get this straight

47 percent of men who actually told us what their password habits were had bad password habits.

*boggle*

I wnat to know how many people, regardless of country or chromosomes, told these people to piss off and mind their own business. That'd be a better indicator, I think.

[Anonymous Coward]

PC Tools study proves

that most people are just (pc using) tools.

mine the one with a list of passwords in the pocket.

just in case there's a confusion, my list only has one item on it.

[Don S.]

For me

7) all of the above.

[Mark Monaghan]

Now let me see...

> Nearly two-thirds of men polled said they would open a link or attachment from a friend without first checking its provenance, compared to a more cautious 48 per cent of women.

I was going to say that if the email is titled "Cute cat doing silly things" then it's a dead cert that that most of the females in our office will open it.

But, as the Moderatrix is watching, then there's probably not a "right" answer to this one - just like when SWMBO asks me if I think she's putting on weight.

It's the one with "Float like a butterfly, sting like a Bee" on the back.

[Anonymous Coward]

The more tech savvy blokes...

... were also savvy enough to dodge someone coming at them with a clipboard in the street...

[Stevie]

Bah!

Given the boilerplate below the article, I'd like to say this is the truest thing I've ever read.

Anything else on-Topic would be deleted, apparently.

[Lou Gosselin]

Too many accounts

There are just too many accounts in too many places to remember them all. Some of them expire every few weeks, others need a separate pin. Some of the accounts are intentionally shared with other people (such as database signons).

What is needed is clearly a centralized sign on, which would be beneficial in it's convenience as well. However, that requires that everyone agrees upon and implements a single sign on standard. There are many technical ways to do this, including encrypted password files, and PKI.

The technical aspects are already solved, the question really becomes: would we be more secure using one strong password that unlocks all accounts, or using several slightly varying passwords which may need to be written down to remember.

If additional security is needed (ie against client-side keylogging trojans) then hardware keys can be used, but hopefully in such a way that one key will work for all services, otherwise we haven't accomplished the goal of single sign on.

In reality though this will be a tough sell. Banks believe they know better and will not share a single sign on with another bank or service (never mind that neither bank knows the password).

[David Webb]

4!

4) Women wear knickers. I have seen.

Unless of course you play WoW, in which case you've never seen a real woman, let alone their panties.

Anyhow, women do use the same password they just don't admit to it because it would make them look silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

But...

"a third of Brits never update their security software, compared to five per cent of Germans"

Germans don't like Norton Anti-virus. It's because they're a bit anti-Symantec.

[kurucu]

@Sir Sham Cadd

Exactly! Anyone who takes a survey detailing their password habbits won't be a useful representation of the public. I assume they all answered to their names, date of births, addresses and pin codes because they might be one of the winners of the top prize: their house conveniently raided while on holiday and their bank accounts emptied.

Having said that, as the vast majority of websites store no useful information on you, who cares what password you use!?

The women I know have accounts for: their banks, online shopping, their e-mail.

Men: Computer forums, car forums, other rubbish....

[peter 5]

@Allow me to post the following copypasta replies:: #

"Even if a single password is used, it being something like 'EF8EWfw__42*k' makes it more secure than having one site as 'password', one site as 'secret', one as 'login', etc."

Not if the website doesn't encrypt your password (i.e. any site which can email it to you when you forget it).

[Anonymous Coward]

"militant feminist agenda"

... Damn. You've told everyone. Now I have to change my password on 475 sites

[Alex 11]

This study is utter rubbish

Any study that is a self-selected listener opinion poll is crap. Drawing conclusions from this study is just pointless.

[Graham Marsden]

@JASR

That's an interesting Compendium of characters, I think I ought to relax and look at the Aquarium or have a Totorum before I end up needing Laudanum.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bears/Woods?

Bit obvious really! Men only have one maybe two thoughts at any given time, hardly surprising we are rubbish at security!

The female mind has at least 7 million concurrent thoughts, mostly remembering the stupid things their blokes have done in the past and musn't ever be allowed to forget about!

[northern monkey]

I used to be quite bad with passwords...

...but fortunately got better recently - mainly due to an explosion in the number of passwords I can remember thanks to my work turning password expiry on and requiring absurd complexity and further following that 4chan hack of the christian group members' facebooks. That said they're all written down in my desk drawer.

Oh, and Ms Bee - love the post-it!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one...

I'm saying nothing for fear of the wrath of the Moderatrix!!!

[peyton?]

From this study I conclude

The ladies are better at protecting against the thing they don't know as much about?

Personally, I'm surrounded by too much nerdery (myself included) to be able to have a non-biased perspective on this.

[Anonymous Coward]

all this proves?

is who is the more capable liar.

The test question is in surveys might be : How often do you admit to being wrong in the face of irrefutable proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

use no protection when online?

ah yes. unsafe hex - theres no better thrill ;-)

of course, those of us not using a stupidly insecure OS with sandbox browsing etc need not

worry about piffling worms, trojans or viruses. you Windows and OSX people just carry on down your digital-pox path

[barmanvarn]

I still have to wonder

It states that men are more likely to use the same password across all websites, while women are more likely to use a different password on each site.

One thing I notice that wasn't mentioned....who is the best at actually remembering their password? I'm not saying I think men or women are better, but it would be interesting to see the results. Using a different password on 5 sites isn't such a great idea if you end up forgetting all 5 of them.

[Steve Evans]

Unfortunatey...

These surveys only reflect the male and female habits of people who fill out surveys.

I don't know about the rest of you, but if the list of questions has a scroll bar on the side, or worse a "Next" button on the bottom, it's going to get skipped.

I'm a busy man, I have 126 individual passwords to change.

[FreeTard]

Hey

I changed my gmail / every website password the other day... to match my work password, coz that had a forced change... bastards. So I added a 1 to it.

[Tom 35]

From the 100 or so people at work...

Women will click on anything. If the cute puppy video didn't work they will then forward it to their friends to see if they can get it to work. Result 5 fake av installs last week.

Men walk away from their computers without locking them. Telling them not to has no effect... setting the background to pink flowers and the home page to a Hello Kitty site is MUCH more effective :)

[MeRp]

Absolutely accurate

My wife uses all kinds of crazy great passwords but has no idea about security threats or the like. I, on the other hand, use a limited set of passwords - especially for linkfacespace, but have a much greater range of knowledge of cyber-threats. This study seems spot on.

[Francis Boyle]

re: Too many accounts

"What is needed is clearly a centralized sign on, which would be beneficial in it's convenience as well. However, that requires that everyone agrees upon and implements a single sign on standard. "

Which exists. It's called (not surprisingly) OpenID.

Not something you'd want to use on a banking site but certainly better than using a common "less secure" password.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm should I use the same title

Sounds to me like the pollsters got the M and F column mixed up again, but I can well believe British people don't use protection when surfing...

[Tempest 3K]

Reminds me of the saying

Lies, damned lies and statistics.....seems apt here

[Apocalypse Later]

Men are from Mars, babes are from Vegas

I have a password stuck to my monitor on a paste-it note. It isn't a password I use for anything, but it would fool a girl.

[JASR]

@Graham Marsden

hehe. vg.

[Ismael]

4

Women wear knickers. I have seen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Password

Mine is P@55w0rd, does that help :0)

[Terry 6]

More passwords...

..more post-its.

Soon I won't be able to see the screen anym

[Anonymous Coward]

mmm, female opression...

That's not true! It's just another example of misandry pushed by a militant feminist agenda, and I for one am sick of it. We have had thousands of years of female oppression. When are men going to take a stand?