How Your Personality is an Online Security Risk

Find out how your personality type may be compromising your online safety.

Data breaches are becoming increasingly common. Every minute, 19 people fall victim to identity theft. Almost every day it seems like there’s another warning in the media about the dangers of using weak passwords and reusing passwords across multiple sites. But despite these warnings, Internet users persist in risky password behaviors.

What’s the problem? It seems you are. A recent study conducted found that personality plays a large part in the insecurity of passwords. The findings suggest that even though we understand the features of a secure password, we go right ahead and use old passwords or ones that are easier for us to remember. In fact, 91% of people know the dangers of reusing passwords, but 61% do it anyway. It turns out that our worry about forgetting passwords is a lot bigger than our worries about someday, maybe, getting hacked. And few of us feel guilty about using weak passwords because we then rationalize our decision to use weak passwords. This is an online security risk that is directly linked to your personality.

Why is Your Personality Making You Use Bad Passwords?

Your personality type helps to explain why you continue to use bad passwords. Which type are you?

Type A

Type A personalities have difficulty believing that they are actually at risk. They can readily recognize that a risk exists, but they feel that because they exert such excellent control and organization over the rest of their lives, they are almost immune to being hacked.

In the study, 35% of Type A personality types stated that they reuse passwords because they want to be able to recall every password. They seek to control.

Another reason why some Type A personality types reuse passwords is that they have developed a controlled system for recalling the password.

Type A personalities also feel – at least 85% of them – that having a strong password helps protect the family, and they believe their password is unbreakable.

Type B

Type B personality types take a nonchalant attitude toward password protection and use it to validate their choice to ignore password warnings.

They feel that it’s more important to have a password that’s easy to remember than one that is harder to decipher.

A whopping 86% of Type B personality types feel that there are other potential threats to online security that are more important than password protection.

These rationalizations about password protection practices are entirely in the mind of the person. In reality, none of these validations holds any truth.

If your personality type is keeping you from using secure password techniques, it’s time to take action before something happens to your data. It’s not too late to let security and common sense prevail over incorrect perceptions about the safety of your online passwords.

For more information about securing your online data, please contact Raleigh IT Support Company and IT Services Provider | CSP Inc. at (919) 424-2000 or info@cspinc.com today. We can help to make sure your passwords are protected no matter what your personality type is!