Why password sharing is becoming more common
You'd forgive me for being perturbed when I recently noticed someone accessing their partner's smartphone using their fingerprint.
Knowing your loved one's passcode for reasons of occasional access to their phone – say, when they are driving – is one thing. Having your fingerprint pre-loaded on their phone so it can be scanned for instant access? That tells me you're either way too close, or don't have enough trust in each other.
Yet the sharing of passwords is common in most households. A Pew Research study found that 67 per cent of couples in committed relationships have shared passwords.
Sharing passwords and other login details on everything from social media to streaming services makes sense for a lot of couples. It's probably out of convenience: sometimes your partner will ask you to log on to their computer and find an email, others you might want to buy and stream a movie on Google Play and you only have one account between you.
The reality of password sharing is that 95 per cent of us share up to six passwords with others, according to password management service LastPass.
The most commonly shared passwords are for wi-fi networks (58 per cent), followed closely by TV/film streaming accounts (48 per cent), financial accounts like online banking (43 per cent), and e-mail addresses (39 per cent).
Who's doing this password sharing? Time magazine data says it matters little what age you are. Sixty-four percent of 18-29-year-olds share passwords, compared with 70 per cent of 30-49-year-olds, 66 per cent of 50-64-year-olds, and 69 per cent of people 65-plus.
From an interpersonal point of view, the sharing of passwords likely means you have nothing to hide, and that's usually a good thing. From a privacy and security perspective, it also means you're ignoring a lot of risks.
While 74 per cent of passwords are shared verbally, 15 per cent are shared by pen and paper, 5.8 per cent by text, and 4.4 per cent by e-mail. Only two per cent are shared using secure password sharing services.
What's more, although 73 per cent of people agree that password sharing is risky, that same 73 per cent are unlikely to change a password after sharing it with someone.
That's extremely problematic when it comes to the kind of data that is available over one's wi-fi network or financial accounts, and even more so because 59 per cent of people re-use their passwords across different online accounts.
That means, giving somebody your Netflix password could likely mean you've given them your Twitter login and iTunes password, too.
When it comes to sharing passwords amongst people who don't live in the same households, Reuters/Ipsos research suggests not many of us do it, but it does happen.
Just 12 per cent of adults overall password-share for TV/film streaming services in this way, although 24 per cent of young people 18-24 do it.
In the fine print of most tech companies' terms and conditions, there's often a stipulation that you're agreeing that only you will use that account. But this is something there's no policing on, and many services allow multiple access from different locations at one time without issues.
From a personal perspective, there's only one area in my life where I share passwords - paywalled news sites.
I have a group of about five friends and all of us subscribe to a different international outlet (they're usually around $10-15 a month), so we're all getting a "pay for one, get access to five" ad-hoc deal.
Rationally, none of us would subscribe to all services and pay over $50 a month for our online news. At least we're paying something for quality journalism, we argue, and we are still being served up advertising on paywalled sites and aren't getting a completely free ride.
The method we do this is theoretically the safest way to share passwords, if there is such a thing, and – if you're going to share any kind of them – how I'd advise you do proceed.
We create a unique password for every service that does not feature elsewhere in anybody's digital lives. It's for that service, and that one only. Passwords are shared only in person, not via digital communication, and changed regularly.
If we were to really take security seriously, though, we all acknowledge that what we're doing still counts as unsafe online behaviour and we shouldn't be doing it at all.
Do you share passwords with your loved ones?
Written by Lee Suckling. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.