Playing the name game

STOP for a minute and think about how many accounts you have that have passwords or PIN numbers. At work, at home; online and offline. Your list almost certainly included your bank account, office email account, at least one home email account, Facebook, Twitter, other social media platforms, some online shopping accounts... and the list probably goes on and on.

In fact, a recent study by The Register found that the average user has 26 password-protected accounts. More interestingly though (especially to hackers) is that on average, those 26 accounts can be accessed by a total of only five different passwords. A similar study by Sophos suggested that one-third of users use the same password for all their accounts.