What is my password? We forget it 36 times a year

IF you feel like you can never remember your online passwords – don’t worry, you are not the only one.

The average person forgets their password 36 times a year – that’s more than once a fortnight – research has found. And one in six forgets it at least once a week.

With so many everyday services like banking, shopping and booking GP appointments now done online, everyone has more and more passwords to remember.

But keeping track of them all in a safe way is becoming increasingly difficult, a study by Lloyds Banking Group revealed. The struggle to remember a growing number of passwords means that, for the first time, Britons are more likely to want to use biometrics – like fingerprint or voice recognition – than a password to log in to online services.

The survey of more than 2,200 people found 40 per cent preferred biometrics, compared to 30 per cent who preferred passwords. The rest had no preference. Nearly six in ten people admitted to having been locked out of an account because they put in the wrong password or username too many times. Women were more likely to admit to forgetting their password, with 84 per cent saying they had forgotten theirs at least once, compared to 79 per cent of men.

Up to two thirds of British adults have used the same password across two or more accounts in an attempt to make it easier to remember – leaving them exposed to fraudsters who could access several accounts if they got hold of the password.

Nearly half of people surveyed admitted writing down their passwords, rising to 60 per cent for people aged 55 to 75. Despite the potential inconvenience, cyber experts recommend keeping a unique password for every account held in order to boost security. This means that if one account is hacked, criminals will be hindered from gaining access to other information.

The Government-backed Get Safe Online service says a safe password can be created by choosing three random words, and adding numbers and punctuation marks.

It also advises people to think of memorable phrases that hackers will not associate with them, then combine the first letter of each word in the sequence.

In order to increase online safety, people should also avoid using obvious personal information in their passwords.