Pacing up with life is not easy and with the advancement of technology, we are living a hassle-free life with some complications. In a time when people have set reminders for drinking water, forgetting passwords seems quite obvious.
While retrieving passwords takes up your time, it costs you money as well. On average, a person spends 3.46 minutes resetting the password every time they forget it. Sometimes, password resetting takes more time than that and it doesn’t look troublesome until you encounter this situation frequently.
According to reports, ‘123456’ and ‘12345678’ were the most common passwords and were used 3.4 million times. Undoubtedly, these passwords are easy to remember but easy to hack as well. Furthermore, you end up spending more than the required time in retrieving and resetting passwords.
If you have multiple accounts and set up the same password for associated accounts as well, there are chances of data breach issues.
Let’s dive deep to know why we forget passwords and the solution to recover them.
Reasons Behind Forgetting Passwords
You are not the only one who forgets the password, we all have been there. Here are the reasons for forgetting passwords from a study by the cybersecurity company, ExpressVPN.
- Owning Multiple Accounts
This is the foremost reason for forgetting passwords as you need to remember more passwords for different accounts. Whether it is a Gmail account, bank account, or social media account, most people have more than two. Each version calls for varying passwords to enhance security and we easily forget them.
- Setting Complex Passwords
While different accounts need strong and secure passwords, we create a quirky combination of alphanumeric, capital, and small case letters, complete with a symbol to keep it strong. A slight missing variable in the password would ask you to reset it if you have ‘forgotten password.’
- Biometric Dependency
Tapping into the technological world has led us to find alternatives for everything and so is for resetting passwords through biometrics. You can use your face recognition and fingerprint sensors on phones to get access to your account but Gmail or bank account login need manual passcodes.
The more you depend on biometrics credentials, the less you remember your password details. This is why it is important to log in through your passwords, patterns, and numbers often to remember it.
Password safety is pivotal and if you need highly encrypted passwords then you can use password managers. Some browsers, like Chrome, provide an in-built password saving option that you can choose as ‘save’, ‘never’, or ‘not now’.
Time Wasted on Resetting Passwords
In resetting passwords, people waste many hours a year. The time to change a password can vary from 3.46 minutes to more than 10 minutes. Studies say that 52% of US respondents change their passwords once a month for security reasons.
Research studies say that employees also waste most of their time altering their passwords as 20-50% of help desk calls are registered regarding the same. Prior to getting into your bank account and getting back to work lags time. Averagely, employees put in 11 hours a year to remember or reset passwords.
The downside of Forgetting Passwords
When you forget the password and reset it, it takes a few minutes but cumulatively, it consumes hours. Along With taking up your time, password lockouts cost you money as well.
Once you are locked out, 20 minutes to 1.5 hours go in vain to get back your password and get access again. This is potentially a loss-making deal for the businesses as the organizations lose significant time of productivity over each quarter. Otherwise, the wasted time of the employees can be utilized to focus on other high-value work to contribute to generating higher revenue.
Right Time to Change Passwords
If you are conscious of your data safety, then you should change your password often. However, this can be frustrating sometimes to pick new passwords every time and biometric recognition is not the solution every time.
Security experts believe that if you already have a strong and unique password, don’t change it frequently until you encounter any complexities. There are many other experts who suggest changing passwords frequently in a year but this is not favorable for most users.
Recovering Passwords and Loss of Control
It is obvious that people forget passwords but according to surveys, people remember the answers to security questions and recover it immediately. Apart from this, there are other obstacles as well that people witness to recovering passwords.
Studies on US users reveal that if they enter the wrong password, it automatically logs out of their account. There are different underlying factors behind this and the waiting time to change the password forces people to change it.
A way for Organizations to Improve Security
Since passwords forgotten or lost is common in companies, there are some solutions to prevent this. Organizations can deploy a strong cyber-security team that not only starts with technology. Companies can create a culture of security encouraging policies, processes, and defined guidelines to understand the perspective of the employees. Resultantly, they get acquainted with the scenario of cyber-security practices and enhance their security practices.
For organizations, a password manager is one of the best resources to leverage to ensure secure passwords. This tool works to manage, generate, store, encrypt, and fill passwords automatically.
Many password managers provide you with a password health feature as well to determine whether it is strong enough to maintain security. This practice also tells you if there is a need to change passwords or not.
With time, you can monitor the strength of the passwords and scan it on the dark web if there are any chances of security breach issues.
Summing Up
Forgetting passwords is quite common these days with the increasing dependency on various technological alternatives. There are different reasons that you forget your passwords and there is a time when you should change your passwords. Creating strong passwords minimizes security risks.
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