You must be thinking why the hell we are talking about the time spent resetting our passwords. Is this something we should be concerned about? Yes, we should be. According to a recent survey conducted by ExpressVPN, the average person spends around 4 minutes resetting their forgotten password.
Well, wasting a few minutes isn’t looking like a big deal, but when we look at the larger picture, some astonishing facts are there which can’t be ignored. A detailed survey report is what we need to look at:
Why do people forget their passwords?
In order to comply with best practices to make their accounts secure, people set complex passwords and that’s the most common reason they forget their passwords. One more reason people are forgetting their passwords is their heavy dependency on biometric logins.
The time we are spending in digital space is increasing with each passing day. More time in digital space means more time to log in to apps we use and even more time lost when we forget our passwords.
We waste several hours every year resetting passwords
As mentioned above, the average person spends around 4 minutes resetting their forgotten password. The survey conducted across U.S., UK, France, and Germany and 8,000 people took part in it.
The average time to change a password was three minutes and 46 seconds across four countries. 37% of Americans take over four minutes to change each password whole 7% take more than 10 minutes.
Even astonishing are the numbers when it comes to the frequency of changing passwords. 52% of U.S. survey participants said that they reset their passwords at least once a month. Similar results are there for France (53%) and the UK (50%). Germans seem to forget their passwords less often. Only 35% of German survey participants said that they reset their passwords at least once a month.
21% of U.S. survey participants said that they reset their passwords at least once a week while 14% acknowledging to reset their passwords at least once a day.
4% of US participants accept having to reset their forgotten passwords more than four times per day, that’s a staggering 103 hours or more than 4 days of a year.
If we look, an average individual takes around 11 hours every year to reset passwords.
People are good at forgetting banking passwords
Around 30% of those surveyed admitted that they most likely forget banking login passwords, followed by social media (24%), online shopping (16%), utility sites and apps (9%), and online gaming (8%).
One of the main reasons for this is that banking passwords are more complex compared to regular passwords used for social media, online shopping and gaming sites and apps.
Only 7% of those surveyed say work accounts as being the ones that they have to reset most often. This is likely because users must log in to their work accounts frequently, preventing them from forgetting their passwords.
How do people recover their passwords?
Forgetting passwords is a part of our digital life and it can’t be avoided. The question now is how do people recover their passwords? 75% of the survey respondents said that they answer security questions they had previously set.
A total of 48% of U.S. respondents say that they’ve asked a friend (10%), family member (16%), or a customer support representative (21%) for assistance when forgetting a password.
When they forget their passwords, over 40% of American, British, and Germans reported that they manually create an entirely new, unique password with a random password generator. The French, however, prefer to take make small changes to the previous passwords.
Though not recommended as a good practice, 16% of German, 12% of French, and over 10% of American and British respondents admit to reusing a password from another account when resetting a forgotten one.
People don’t like resetting passwords
Of the most annoying or frustrating things we encounter in our daily life, forgetting passwords is one of them.
35% of the respondents cite a slow internet connection as the only thing more annoying than forgetting an online password. It is even more frustrating for people than losing their car keys, being stuck in a traffic jam and buffering while streaming.
Where to better spent the time
A survey reveals that an average person wastes around 11 hours a year resetting passwords. This time could be better spent boosting mental and physical well-being. When asked about what they’d do if they got the time from resetting their passwords back, 30% preferred to spend this time with family and friends, 16% to read a book, and 8% to try a new hobby.
If we look at the above findings, people prefer to participate in activities that make them mentally and physically sound.
32% of respondents believe that resetting a password is a normal part of life, while another 20% feel that there’s nothing they can do to avoid having to reset passwords.