A recent survey in Britain revealed that more than 70% of the people questioned would hand over their passwords in exchange for a bar of chocolate. 34% of those asked would give away a password for no bribe at all. Another survey found that 79% would indirectly give away their password by revealing how they chose it. The password survey was commissioned by Infosecurity Europe, a security trade show.

Unsurprisingly, even those people who wouldn't turn over their passwords were making bad choices for passwords; that is, those that can be easily guessed. These were things like the names of pets, sports teams, names of relatives, etc. Two-thirds of people use the same password on every site they visit. On average, people had to remember about 4 passwords and often wrote them down somewhere in order to remember them.

Also unsurprisingly, 80% of people found passwords frustrating and wanted some other way to log on to systems. I find this notion completely understandable, as I have to remember about 10 passwords for sites and systems that I commonly use myself. And in my advanced age with my buggy short-term memory, I find this difficult and frustrating indeed.

While some clever engineers have proposed interesting solutions to the problem of remembering passwords and to password security over the years, to this day we're still using this same arcane system for verification of identity.

It would be great to see a group of engineers and psychologists tackle the problem together, looking for some means to make identity verification easier for people while still maintaining security. Biometrics would be a great way to go, but we can't expect everyone to attach a thumbprint readers to their computers or turn over a DNA sample for each login prompt (ala Gattaca).

Unfortunately, they'd find it difficult to overcome the hard problem of the chocolate bar.

---Nick

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