Survey: Consumers want anything but passwords
27 May, 2016
category: Biometrics, Corporate, Digital ID, Financial
Fifty-two percent of consumers would like to use anything other than usernames and passwords when creating a new account, according to a Gigya survey of 4,000 consumers in the U.S. and the U.K. ranging from baby boomers to millennials. Consumers want to use social media accounts, biometrics and two-factor authentication for access.
Overall survey findings include:
- More than half – 52% — of all respondents prefer to log into online accounts using authentication methods that are more secure than traditional usernames and passwords, including 29% that prefer using two-factor authentication and 20% that prefer biometric authentication
- Eighty percent of consumers who expressed a preference believe biometric authentication is more secure than traditional usernames and passwords
- Only 16% of respondents follow password best practices with a unique password for each online account. Six percent use the same password for all accounts and 63% use seven or fewer passwords across all their online accounts
- Some 26% of all respondents have had at least one online account compromised in the past 12 months. When segmented by generation, 35% of millennials, 28% of Generation Xers and 18% of baby boomers reported having online accounts compromised
- Only 33% of millennials create secure passwords for everything. The rest use passwords like “password,” “1234,” their names or birthdays. In contrast, 42% of Generation Xers and 53% of baby boomers always create secure passwords
- Sixty-eight percent abandon the creation of an online account due to complex password requirements, while 55% abandon a login page because they forgot their passwords or answered a security question incorrectly
In addition to security risks posed by traditional password authentication, businesses lose one-on-one customer engagement opportunities when registrations are inconvenient. Insecure passwords leave consumers at risk of phishing and fraud, but businesses that address this with complex password requirements negatively impact customer experience.
Millennials show the least amount of patience for setting up an online account with 38% abandoning an online registration page when password requirements are too strict. Their Generation X and baby boomer counterparts are not much more tolerant, with 33% and 27% abandonment rates, respectively. Even when consumers have created online accounts, 55% of respondents admit to abandoning a login due to a forgotten password, indicating businesses can potentially double visitors’ login rates by offering alternative forms of authentication.
The entire study can be dowloaded here.