L’home dibuixat

Un estudi sobre les contrasenyes utilitzades per setanta milions d'usuaris de Yahoo!, obtingudes de forma legítima i que corresponen a les contrasenyes reals dels usuaris («The science of guessing: analyzing an anonymized corpus of 70 million password») arriba a una curiosa conclusió: els usuaris de més de 55 anys d'edat fan servir contrasenyes el doble de fortes en comparació amb els menors de 25 anys. I, comparant per nacionalitat, els que apliquen les regles més complexes són els alemanys i els coreans (els indonesis estan a l'altre extrem).

Users’ account history also illustrates several interesting trends. There is a clear trend towards stronger passwords amongst users who actively change their password, with users who have changed passwords 5 or more times being one of the strongest groups. There is a weaker trend towards stronger passwords amongst users who have completed an email-based password recovery. However, users who have had their password reset manually after reporting their account compromised do not choose better passwords than average users. Users who log in infrequently, judging by the time of previous login before observation in our experiment, choose slightly better passwords. A much stronger trend is that users who have recently logged in from multiple locations choose relatively strong passwords.