Password fatigue

Password fatigue describes the syndrome where people are required to remember an excessive number of passwords as part of their daily living.

The increasing prominence of information technology and the Internet in employment, finance, recreation and other aspects of people's lives, and the ensuing introduction of secure transaction technology, has led to people accumulating a proliferation of accounts and passwords. According to British online-security consultant NTA Monitor the typical intensive computer user has 21 accounts that require a password.

Aside from contributing to stress password fatigue may encourage people to adopt risky strategies that reduce the security of their information, putting them at risk of identity fraud. For example, an account holder might use the same password for several different accounts, deliberately choose easy to remember passwords that are vulnerable to cracking, or alternatively create written records of their passwords.

Single sign-on software can help mitigate this problem by only requiring users to remember one password to an application that in turn will automatically give access to several other accounts.

See Also

• Password
• Password strength
• Identity management
• Password Safe