Research suggests the average person has between 25 and 35 unique logins they need to remember. It’s no wonder that nearly 40% of people forget a password at least once a week!
Surveys also suggest that we are 61% MORE likely to share password information that’s work-related (vs. personal account information) over email.
If you are a business owner with a team, that’s a statistic you don’t want to ignore. Especially when there are free, easy-to-install options to prevent your organization from being so vulnerable.
We constantly need to login to software and services. Why is sending passwords over email a bad idea?
First, email is generally not encrypted. It’s sent on a “plain text” format. If the email is intercepted and scraped by some sort of malicious software or a hacker, it’s an easy thing to scrape data from it.
Second, your email goes through several systems on it’s way to you or to your recipient. It starts in your inbox and gets saved in your account after you send it. Then it goes through your email server and travels to your recipient’s email server–plus any other systems or servers it passes through along the way. If any one of those systems is vulnerable and gets hacked or compromised, your password information can be revealed to hackers.
What are some alternatives to using email to share passwords?
The first is to choose a strong password (like with 12 or more characters). We share a couple other ideas in this video–including downloading a free password manager like LogMeOnce. That’s the surest and hassle-free way to encrypt your information and pass it along to those you choose for the length of time you wish to give them access.
