Lazy password reuse opens Brits to crooks' penetration

The average Brit maintains 26 online accounts but only uses five different passwords to keep them secure.

A poll of 2,000 by Experian found that one in four people uses a single password for the majority of profiles, and one in 25 stick with the same one for ALL their accounts. In addition to chronic password reuse, failing to close unused accounts poses an addition privacy risk.

Two-thirds of those surveyed (66 per cent) copped to having defunct profiles which hold valuable personal and financial information – including social network profiles (26 per cent), email addresses (18 per cent) and shopping accounts (21 per cent).

Leaked personal information opens the doors to identity fraud, a crime suffered by an estimated two million UK citizens. About 90 per cent of the 12 million pieces of personal information illegally traded online globally between January and April this year involved password and login combinations, according to figures from Experian's identity web monitoring service.

More here - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/20/password_reuse_survey/

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