OREANDA-NEWS. December 02, 2015. The Cyber Savvy Quiz from Kaspersky Lab demonstrated that many people may not be as mindful and cautious about the passwords they create for online accounts as they should. One in seven (14%) admitted to having just one password for all their online accounts, and only 38 percent of respondents said they create new, strong passwords for each account.

The quiz results also showed that 36 percent of those surveyed use several of the same passwords for their accounts and 12 percent use variations of the same password pattern. In addition, according to the Consumer Security Risks Survey by Kaspersky Lab, 1 in 10 respondents comes up with passwords that are less than eight characters in length, while 12 percent said they do not use combinations of upper-case letters, numbers mixed with letters, or symbols to create complex passwords.

To make matters worse, the Consumer Security Risks Survey also revealed that consumers are storing their passwords in easy to access places. Over half (57%) of respondents admitted they kept their passwords on a piece of paper, on their phones, in text files on their computers, or saved them in the browser.

This careless attitude towards passwords can be explained by many users being convinced they have no confidential information stored on their computers. This is what 27 percent of respondents believe, without realizing that passwords and logins are a favorite target of cybercriminals.

“Unfortunately, many people don’t have a very good understanding of the scale of Internet threats and are not serious enough about protecting their personal data online, significantly increasing the risk of losing it,” explains David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab. “A strong password that differs for each account is an important basic element of protecting your digital identity. You can think of and apply a single algorithm to create passwords which are not easily cracked but which you can easily remember. There are also special programs that make creating and storing passwords easier.”

Dealing with passwords can be made much easier with Kaspersky Password Manager. The application randomly generates strong passwords, stores them securely, and automatically synchronizes and inserts passwords on all of the user’s devices.

Are you good at protecting yourself online? Take the test at https://blog.kaspersky.com/cyber-savvy-quiz/.

Learn how to secure your data at https://blog.kaspersky.com/tag/cybersavvy.