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'...average of over 100 passwords in Europe' I'm truly fascinated at this number; if I understood it correctly that means you are registered to at least 100 se

'...average of over 100 passwords in Europe' I'm truly fascinated at this number; if I understood it correctly that means you are registered to at least 100 services that you semi-actively use, AND have different passwords for all. Not even the people I know who generate randomised passwords have more than 20 they use regularly. Is it an exaggeration or a realistic figure?

bovermyer 10y ago
I don't know about other people, but I have well over 1,500 accounts on various sites, probably about 300ish that I use on a regular (read: at least weekly) basis. However, I use a password manager that logs in for me, as well as generating passwords. I actually don't know what 99% of my passwords are, and almost never type them. This Trust API sounds interesting. I'm curious to see where it goes.
bloat 10y ago
I use Passpack's free service which will store a maximum of 100 passwords for you. I have been at max capacity for some time now, but you're right, a lot are not used regularly and I can generally find an old one to delete when I need to add a new one.
galfarragem 10y ago
Recently (after a friend being hacked) I changed all my passwords and unsubscribed from as many services as (confortably) possible trying to reduce my 'digital footprint'. After reduction I still have 60 accounts/passwords.. So 100 passwords is very realistic IMO.
dfan 10y ago
My password manager currently has 153 passwords in it. I was surprised too once it started filling up.
21 10y ago
My password manager has 500 entries. Around 75% of them are website passwords.
- majewsky 10y ago
  What is the remaining 25%? 125 mail accounts? :)
VLM 10y ago
I propose that some of the opposition to micropayments and pay for clickbait and paywalls and such is password fatigue. I classify my accounts as critical/financial (if someone got this it would cost money or legal problems) and don't care. I have a handful of critical and financial passwords, but every "don't care" is the same password. If someone gets my HN password, they also pown my facebook and linkedin and random forums and sites, but those are irrelevant so I don't really care because none of that stuff matters or contains anything important. (By important I mean real world important like buy food or get medical care or whatever, in an abstract sense HN is important to me, but not nearly as important as being able to feed my kids) I don't know what I'd do with micropayments (if someone stole this login they could steal the equivalent of a can of soda from me... should I care enough to set up and maintain and track and occasionally change a special dedicated individual password for that can of soda equiv for something like that?) I believe this also explains the rise of Amazon. Oh man, somewaycoolstore.com won't let me check out without creating an account and keeping my credit card info (probably in plain text of course)? That sucks. I'm willing to buy the same thing from Amazon for more money because I don't have yet another account and yet another pending security breach with my CC number. Note that some superficially "financial" sites are not risky. If someone stole my electric company login, they could... pay my bill for me? The site isn't terribly functional and I like it like that. I can only write payment methods not read payment methods, so my bank account info is perfectly safe. Their billing system thankfully isn't integrated with their customer support at all, which superficially sounds awful, but at least if someone stole my acct they couldn't enter a service disconnect order in my name. I'm pretty well off, if someone else clicked "pay bill" for me they couldn't cause bounced checks, I just have too much money for that (and/or my efficient house has bills too small to matter). I guess the worst thing someone could do to my electric company account is change my password, which would waste about 10 minutes of my time getting it reset over the phone. Its not worth the substantial operational cost of setting up a special password. I don't need fingerprint reading and retina scanning and DNA verification to log in and click "pay" every month. A truly interesting passwordless solution would be for me to give permission to not password protect my electric bill. The "secret" data is already public and resold to every .com and .gov on the planet. A suitably intelligent protocol more complicated than "click, its done" could work. If I got push notifications of anyone including myself or wife trying to pay my bill and they didn't charge for a day or two and I could fix any "problem" in less than a day or two, I'd be happy with that.
dspeyer 10y ago
I suspect most people who don't use a password manager reuse passwords. A lot. If you get the password to one of my unimportant accounts, you get the password to most of them. They're unimportant, but still...
majewsky 10y ago
I'd vote for realistic. My password manager has nearly 100 accounts already, and I'm not even the kind of person who signs up for every random webshop or raffle.

bovermyer 10y ago

I don't know about other people, but I have well over 1,500 accounts on various sites, probably about 300ish that I use on a regular (read: at least weekly) basis. However, I use a password manager that logs in for me, as well as generating passwords. I actually don't know what 99% of my passwords are, and almost never type them. This Trust API sounds interesting. I'm curious to see where it goes.

bloat 10y ago

I use Passpack's free service which will store a maximum of 100 passwords for you. I have been at max capacity for some time now, but you're right, a lot are not used regularly and I can generally find an old one to delete when I need to add a new one.

galfarragem 10y ago

Recently (after a friend being hacked) I changed all my passwords and unsubscribed from as many services as (confortably) possible trying to reduce my 'digital footprint'. After reduction I still have 60 accounts/passwords.. So 100 passwords is very realistic IMO.

dfan 10y ago

My password manager currently has 153 passwords in it. I was surprised too once it started filling up.

21 10y ago

My password manager has 500 entries. Around 75% of them are website passwords.

majewsky 10y ago
What is the remaining 25%? 125 mail accounts? :)

VLM 10y ago

I propose that some of the opposition to micropayments and pay for clickbait and paywalls and such is password fatigue. I classify my accounts as critical/financial (if someone got this it would cost money or legal problems) and don't care. I have a handful of critical and financial passwords, but every "don't care" is the same password. If someone gets my HN password, they also pown my facebook and linkedin and random forums and sites, but those are irrelevant so I don't really care because none of that stuff matters or contains anything important. (By important I mean real world important like buy food or get medical care or whatever, in an abstract sense HN is important to me, but not nearly as important as being able to feed my kids) I don't know what I'd do with micropayments (if someone stole this login they could steal the equivalent of a can of soda from me... should I care enough to set up and maintain and track and occasionally change a special dedicated individual password for that can of soda equiv for something like that?) I believe this also explains the rise of Amazon. Oh man, somewaycoolstore.com won't let me check out without creating an account and keeping my credit card info (probably in plain text of course)? That sucks. I'm willing to buy the same thing from Amazon for more money because I don't have yet another account and yet another pending security breach with my CC number. Note that some superficially "financial" sites are not risky. If someone stole my electric company login, they could... pay my bill for me? The site isn't terribly functional and I like it like that. I can only write payment methods not read payment methods, so my bank account info is perfectly safe. Their billing system thankfully isn't integrated with their customer support at all, which superficially sounds awful, but at least if someone stole my acct they couldn't enter a service disconnect order in my name. I'm pretty well off, if someone else clicked "pay bill" for me they couldn't cause bounced checks, I just have too much money for that (and/or my efficient house has bills too small to matter). I guess the worst thing someone could do to my electric company account is change my password, which would waste about 10 minutes of my time getting it reset over the phone. Its not worth the substantial operational cost of setting up a special password. I don't need fingerprint reading and retina scanning and DNA verification to log in and click "pay" every month. A truly interesting passwordless solution would be for me to give permission to not password protect my electric bill. The "secret" data is already public and resold to every .com and .gov on the planet. A suitably intelligent protocol more complicated than "click, its done" could work. If I got push notifications of anyone including myself or wife trying to pay my bill and they didn't charge for a day or two and I could fix any "problem" in less than a day or two, I'd be happy with that.

dspeyer 10y ago

I suspect most people who don't use a password manager reuse passwords. A lot. If you get the password to one of my unimportant accounts, you get the password to most of them. They're unimportant, but still...

majewsky 10y ago

I'd vote for realistic. My password manager has nearly 100 accounts already, and I'm not even the kind of person who signs up for every random webshop or raffle.