Exclusive: Lots of us use password managers, but we still don’t really trust them
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Since most of us collect digital accounts all the time, password managers are a useful tool to simplify keeping track of every login and password we have.
In an exclusive survey of a thousand people, Tech Radar Pro found that three-quarters of users have at least one password manager to store our credentials, but most don’t seem too confident in their ability to keep this data safe.
One-third of those surveyed used a combination of a dedicated manager and one integrated with their browser, while another third used only one of the two. Just over a tenth used two dedicated password managers and a quarter used no manager at all.
Trust issues
When asked to rate their confidence in password manager security, the results weren’t exactly impressive. Six out of ten was the most common score, chosen by 144 people, followed closely by five and seven, chosen by 140 and 136 people respectively.
Perhaps these mediocre numbers can be explained by the recent stories of prominent password managers being hacked, or maybe people are worried about the various privacy issues surrounding giants like Apple and Google, both of which make it hard to resist using their respective in-house managers , if you happen to be using one of their devices and/or browsers.
The results may also reflect people’s contradictory attitudes towards such companies. On the one hand, people may believe that tech giants should keep our passwords safe – aside from having the resources to maintain a strong security foothold, it would be catastrophic PR for them if they had some major breach. would make, given how much they’ve lost.
But on the other hand, there is a lot of mistrust about the way such companies do business, with the aforementioned privacy issues being a concern for many.
However, when analyzing the rest of the scores, more people chose a rating between eight and ten than between one and three – 284 to 215. Also, 110 gave these utilities a perfect ten, and 97 gave them one out of ten.
Splitting the results in half, just under half (43.6%) of all respondents rated the reliability of password managers between one and five, and just over half (54.6%) rated them between six and ten.
The results also contradict a previous survey we conducted, in which most respondents said they didn’t use a password manager. Another survey we conducted also found that most people don’t use password generators – they are integrated with almost all password managers, but there are also standalone versions.
These two facts together may explain why so many people have bad password habits. In fact, there are several reports on the status of passwords worldwide, and pretty much all come to the same conclusion: we need to do better.
However, this may be a moot point as passwordless systems are becoming increasingly important and will become the new technology that secures our digital world. These include biometric systems – such as facial recognition and fingerprint scanners – access keys and single sign-on (SSO) technologies, which are available in many identity management software.