77% of people use unsafe passwords

• In addition, according to a survey carried out by S2 Grupo from its blog Hijosdigitales.es, 56% of users never change their passwords, which shows the importance of promoting responsible and protected use of new technologies.

• The expert team of this company specialized in cybersecurity has created a decalogue with 10 essential recommendations to improve the management of our passwords.

Valencia, 30 January 2017.-

The increased use of new technologies and online services (email, banking, shopping, television, etc.) has increased the number of passwords we use. In this context S2 Grupo, a company specialized in cybersecurity, has conducted a survey through its blog Hijosdigitales.es to know the habits of users in relation to their passwords, an essential element to maintain the privacy and security of different accounts and devices that we use.

The study shows that 56% of people say they never change their passwords and use them for years. Only about 18% change them monthly and around 13% renew them annually. Along with this, 77% recognize using "weak" passwords made up of letters, numbers or the combination of both, and only 13% of respondents make use of passwords considered safe (they are composed of letters, numbers, capital letters, small letters and special characters like "%", "&", etc.). In addition, 42.7% of users use the same password for everything and only 31% have a different password for each environment.

"From the result of this survey we verified how there is still a very wide tendency to use unsafe passwords, so it is necessary to promote responsible and protected use in online environments. Using this type of passwords means being really exposed to the possible action of a hacker who could access our devices or accounts by using them or stealing information, for example, which may be especially serious in the case of minors ", said José Rosell, associate-director of S2 Grupo

Decalogue to improve password management To make better use of our passwords, the team of experts of S2 Grupo has developed a decalogue with essential recommendations that will help us better protect ourselves in the use of new technologies:

• Do not use familiar data.- this would leave us more exposed to people who know us or contacts of our social networks. That is why it is important that our passwords do not respond to the place where we live, the name of our pet or our place of vacation.
• Avoid words or series of numbers.- Hackers use automatic systems to decipher passwords that make use of word dictionaries and generate combinations of numbers. According to recent studies, the worst passwords are '123456', 'password', 'abc123', 'qwerty', and so on.
• Choose strong passwords.- It is advisable that our keys have 8 characters minimum, uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols of the keyboard, thus making it difficult for them to be hit by tools designed for this purpose.
• Never "save password".- Although it is a very comfortable measure for our browser to remember our password, we can seriously compromise our privacy.
• Choose memorizable passwords that are not predictable.- So that remembering them is not a problem, we can use some word or combination of numbers that is familiar to us and accompany it with the rest of the element of a strong password, for example.
• Use different passwords for each service.- If we use the same code for everything and it is decrypted by a cyber-attacker, we will compromise the security of all the services and devices we use. For this reason, it is essential that they are different.
• Change the passwords periodically.- If we want to increase our security, it is imperative to renew the passwords periodically, this way we will prevent another person from using them if at any moment they were able to have access to them.
• Keep them secret. The best way for other people not to access our accounts is not to share our passwords with anyone.
• Record them in a safe place.- If we want to register them somewhere in case they are forgotten, it is advisable to do it somewhere that we consider safe in our home and never do it on the computer, tablet or smartphone.
• Use of applications.- There are more and more applications that can help us encrypt our passwords to safeguard them in an appropriate way and to be able to remember them in case it is necessary.

Hijosdigitales.es This blog, developed by S2 Grupo has more than 10,000 daily visits from all over the world and has established itself as a meeting point for parents and children to promote the safe use of technology. A group of professionals specialized in security, social networks and technology works in it with the objective of offering relevant information that is of aid to groups that can be unprotected if they make an inappropriate use of this type of devices and tools.

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