How many user IDs and passwords do you have? Hopefully, you have several to keep your identity and personal information private. But, unfortunately, today’s advanced computing power can easily hack into most online identities pretty quickly — and, it is pretty time-consuming and human-memory intensive to create and employ multiple accounts.
Christopher Matthews, writing for Time, offers some insights about where we are today and where we may be headed in the future with regard to user IDs and passwords:
“What’s the absolute worst part of the Internet? Reasonable folks may disagree, but most would say keeping track of an endless string of passwords ranks somewhere at the top. Nobody, of course, can remember a unique password for the dozens of sites we each sign into each day, so we end up using the same one over and over again. But this practice makes us increasingly vulnerable to hackers who can find valuable passwords for our bank accounts and E-mail by breaking into other less secure sites.”
“A recent study released by Nok Nok shows just how bad many of us are at protecting our online identities. On average, it says, an Internet user has 6.5 passwords, and he/she shares one password among 3.9 Web sites. Furthermore, ever growing computer power is causing even safe passwords to be vulnerable. According to a report from consulting firm Deloitte, more than 90% of user-generated passwords are ‘vulnerable to hacking.’”
“This is why a consortium of tech companies, including PayPal and Google, have joined together to dream up the future of passwords. And the future, according to this FIDO Alliance (which stands for Fast Identity Online) is to have no passwords at all. ‘Passwords are just not working terribly well anymore,’ says Michael Barrett, chief information-security officer of PayPal and president of FIDO.”
