Is There Anything More Frustrating than Forgetting an Email Password?

New research from NordPass has shown just how easy it is to forget a password, and Gmail is the biggest culprit causing people to search the internet for ways to do it.

Getting congratulations from your computer or phone for a strong password simply means you’ve created one that is hard for others to crack and one that is easy for you to forget. With warnings popping up on your screen telling you ‘make sure it’s unique’, ‘put in a number and a unique character’, it’s almost impossible for the human brain to remember them all!

And, don’t even think of writing it down and keeping that piece of paper safe as it’s odds on you’ll forget where you put that too! Luxurious Magazine aside, almost every website or app on the planet suggests you should register in some shape or form. With so many passwords floating around, it’s odds-on you’ll forget at least one.

NordPass has confirmed this via their most recent research. They discovered in their data that email companies are causing the most stress with 49% of people searching how to reset passwords for their provider.

So what is it with email passwords?
Earlier this year, a NordPass survey revealed that email accounts are one of the most valued ones. In the UK, 78% of respondents worry about their email account, while only 48% use a unique password.

“It also appears that most respondents have their password saved on their computer and don’t need to enter it every time they log in. If they actually had to, they would have trouble remembering it. This could explain why so many people search for ways to reset their email password,” says Chad Hammond, a security expert at NordPass.

People seem to remember passwords from their productivity applications the best, or they rarely search for resetting instructions on those. Why? “According to the same password habits survey from April 2020, users rarely use unique passwords to protect their productivity applications.

Only 19% of respondents from the UK use a unique password. Since the passwords are simple and memorable, users are less likely to forget them and don’t need to search how to reset them,” says the NordPass security expert.

A study conducted by Rutgers-New Brunswick and Aalto University in Finland suggests another theory on why people forget their passwords so often. According to the study, the likelihood of remembering a password has less to do with its complexity than with how often we anticipate using it.

In other words, you’re far more likely to remember a complicated password if you know you’ll be using it frequently, and you are less likely to remember a simple password if you don’t expect to use it very often.

For those struggling with effective password management, security experts advise password managers. “These tools will not only remember your password for you and make it secure and convenient but will also help you generate unique credentials as well as check if they have been breached before”, says Chad Hammond.

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