Brits Still Prefer Using Passwords over Biometrics To Log In
July 2019 by GMX
30% of people say that typing in a password is still their preferred method of logging in to their online accounts according to a survey of 1,050 people in the UK carried out by email services company GMX.
Compared to a similar GMX survey in 2016, this number has almost halved from 61%. Despite this, alternative login methods have not yet become widely accepted. The most favoured biometric authentication method in 2019, fingerprint recognition, is only used by 22% of Brits (compared to 15% in 2016) while iris scans (4%), facial (1%) and voice recognition (1%) hardly feature at all.
While passwords are still the number one login method, many internet users continue to struggle with them: 30% said they had at least ten different online accounts; 43% said that the number of different passwords that they had to remember was ‘overwhelming’; and 8% even said that trying to remember all their passwords was ‘more stressful than a divorce or changing jobs’.
The use of technical support to manage passwords however is not yet widespread. 40% said that they simply ‘remembered’ their passwords but many of them still struggle to do this: 19% said that they get locked out of an account at least once a month because of multiple incorrect attempts to access it. Given the choice between Single Sign-On services (where you can log in with any device - laptop, PC, smartphone, etc.) or a password manager (where each service has to be logged in separately with its own password), 32% preferred Single Sign-On while 24% chose password manager. (A further 24% said they had no preference).