A study conducted by Asia Pacific College (APC) in the Philippines reveals that students use the same weak passwords regardless of their grades.
The study was conducted as part of research by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on choosing secure passwords.
NIST checks whether the password used by the user has been compromised in the past and is included in previous public breaches.
If the password is included in previous breaches, the website should consider it insecure, as it can very easily be hacked.
What researchers from Asia Pacific College (APC) did was take emails and check whether their passwords had been leaked in previous breaches, correlating the results with their grade point average.
Each student's personal information was redacted for greater protection. The researchers checked the students' passwords against a huge list containing all the passwords that had been exposed so far.
The results showed that the student's grade does not play any role when it comes to choosing their password.
The study also showed that most students use very long passwords, with an average of 11.2 characters.
While the researchers noted that students with higher scores had the lowest percentage of weak passwords, it doesn't mean they made the most secure choice.
For information, the study was published last week and checked the passwords of 1,252 college students, of which 215 were using passwords that had previously been exposed in public breaches.
