Improving multiple-password recall: an empirical study

Jie Zhang, Xin Luo, Somasheker Akkaladevi and Jennifer Ziegelmayer

European Journal of Information Systems, 2009, vol. 18, issue 2, 165-176

Abstract: As one of the most common authentication methods, passwords help secure information by granting access only to authorized parties. To be effective, passwords should be strong, secret, and memorable. While password strength can be enforced by automated information technology policies, users frequently jeopardize secrecy to improve memorability. The password memorability problem is exacerbated by the number of different passwords a user is required to remember. While short-term memory theories have been applied to individual-password management problems, the relationship between memory and the multiple-password problem has not been examined. This paper treats the multiple-password management crisis as a search and retrieval problem involving human beings’ long-term memory. We propose that interference between different passwords is one of the major challenges to multiple-password recall and that interference alleviation methods can significantly improve multiple-password recall. A lab experiment was conducted to examine the effectiveness of two interference alleviation methods: the list reduction method and the unique identifier method. While both methods improve multiple-password recall performance, the list reduction method leads to statistically significant improvement. The results demonstrate the potential merit of practices targeting multiple-password interference. By introducing long-term memory theory to multiple-password memorability issues, this study presents implications benefiting users and serves as the potential starting point for future research.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1057/ejis.2009.9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:18:y:2009:i:2:p:165-176

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tjis20

DOI: 10.1057/ejis.2009.9

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Information Systems is currently edited by Par Agerfalk

More articles in European Journal of Information Systems from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().