Geezers Pick Stronger Passwords Than Young'uns 189
McGruber writes "Joseph Bonneau, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, calculated the password strengths of nearly 70 million Yahoo! users. He compared the strengths of passwords chosen by different demographic groups and compared the results. People over the age of 55 pick passwords double the strength of those chosen by people under 25 years old." Does this mean that the younger users are more cavalier and naive, or are they simply more cynical about the actual value of strong passwords in the era of large-scale user-database compromises?
Re:Use case differences... (Score:5, Funny)
Older users are more likely to have a Yahoo address as their primary email, etc.
Real geezers telnet into the server and read their email using MH. If the command line was good enough in 1982, then it is good enough today.
Re:Education (Score:5, Funny)
Newspeak FTW. LOL.
Re:Use case differences... (Score:5, Funny)
username: OldGeezr
pwd: G3t0ffMyL4wn!
Re:Use case differences... (Score:5, Funny)
...and the Concorde just flew an inch over yer head....
I'm Happy to Explain This (Score:5, Funny)
Back in the Day -- as we geezers like to begin the sentences we use to talk down to you -- having that box on your desk prompt you for a password was a much more rare and curious thing than it is today. Our computer-y crap sat right there in the box by our legs, or maybe down the hall in that cold room with the raised floor with the fat bastard in it. And we would have li'l whispered conversations with the fat bastard as we passed him in the Break Room, like "I know you know my password, you fat bastard, and if I ever think for a heartbeat that you're going through my crap I will key your car and beat you like a baby seal." Our passwords were the things meant to keep our crap from the prying eyes of the sinister-but-clever sociopaths in Marketing and Accounting who would indeed rifle our desks for clues, like children's and pet names, in order to look at our computer-y crap. So selecting a password like P*/34_##FuK-U-Joey!!39* had real value. So today, when industry insists we store our computer-y crap -- which now includes bank account access, photo albums, our music collections, and christ-knows what else -- on servers spread around the world operated by even fatter bastards whom we don't see and can't effectively intimidate, it should come as no surprise the habit has stayed with us, despite being prompted for passwords every twenty minutes...
Re:Use case differences... (Score:4, Funny)