Keeping up with life’s pace might be challenging, but we now lead somewhat complicated yet hassle-free lives thanks to technological advancements. Now that people have water reminders on their phones, forgetting passwords is a no-brainer. Even though it’s not a big deal, it’s essential to understand the reasons for password forgetting or how to reset them quickly. Why? Because there are quick fixes that can be used to solve these problems and save everyone time and frustration.
According to a recent survey conducted by ExpressVPN, the average person spends three minutes and 46 seconds resetting a password each time they forget it. While losing a few minutes may not seem like a big deal, most respondents polled admit to using the “forgot my password” steps far more frequently than they’d prefer.
Why do we forget our passwords?
Websites emphasize telling users whether their passwords are strong or weak, yet they need to do something to help people remember passwords. Certain practices improve the security of our accounts as well as increase our chances of forgetting our passwords. Some of these include:
- Setting a complex password in an effort to make our accounts more secure
- Using different passwords across various platforms and having to remember them
- Heavily relying on biometric logins to get into our digital accounts and forgetting our manual login details
Text-based passwords are generally hard to remember, and people favour easy and insecure passwords. The research reveals that human memory adapts naturally depending on an estimate of how frequently a password will be required. Passwords often used are less likely to be forgotten, and system designers must consider the environment in which passwords are used and how memory operates over time.
ExpressVPN polled 8,000 people in the US, UK, France, and Germany to better understand the effects of resetting a forgotten password. Together, this group sheds light on the most common password usage patterns and suggests possible uses for the lost time caused by forgotten passwords.
People waste hours each year resetting passwords
People lose countless hours each year trying to reset passwords. They squander many hours a year updating passwords. Changing passwords might take anywhere from 3.46 minutes to more than 10 minutes.
According to studies, 52% of Americans change their passwords once a month for security concerns. Moreover, employees squander most of their time changing their passwords, as 20-50% of help desk calls are related to this. Employees spend an average of 11 hours each year memorizing or resetting passwords.
21% of U.S. respondents claim to change their passwords more than once per week, with 14% claiming to do so at least once every day. The latter number adds up to a startling 26 hours that a person spends annually. Even worse, 4% of Americans report having to reset forgotten passwords more than four times every day, which equates to staggering 103 hours per year.
Password recovery statistics
Although it is evident that people forget passwords, surveys show that people still recall the answers to security questions and can quickly restore their accounts. In addition to this, individuals have various challenges when trying to recover passwords.
76% of US users admitted to being locked out of their accounts after entering the wrong password. At the same time, 48% of US users who responded to the survey stated that when they forgot their password, they turned to a friend, a family member, or a customer service agent for help.
Over 40% of American, British, and German users claim that their ideal approach is to generate a completely new, unique password manually or use a random password generator when they can recover their forgotten passwords.
What is the easiest way to manage your passwords?
For the last two decades, we’ve been told to formulate complicated passwords that contain a random string of uppercase and lowercase text mixed with symbols because they would be harder to crack.
Making a complex and one-of-a-kind password has the benefit of enhancing account security. However, there is a drawback that results in forgetting the complex password. Therefore, password resets become time-consuming. According to experts, the best secure method for remembering your passwords is to use password managers. It is a simple method to keep track of and manage your passwords.
By utilizing, you only need to memorize one primary password to gain access to different passwords. Furthermore, password managers automatically fill in the login forms for the sites you frequently visit. If you forget your passwords, you can log in to your account quickly and easily with a single tap.
