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Does Password Complexity Increase with Age?

CSEF · 2016 Behavioral & Social Sciences Third Award

Sean F. Duarte · Hilldale School, Daly City, San Mateo County

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of this study is to determine if people's passwords get more complex with age. Methods/Materials Gathered 3 passwords from each of the 127 different people through the use of Survey Monkey, an online survey tool. Created an algorithm in Excel to determine password complexity. Results The algorithm that I devised allowed me to easily determine password complexity for each password, average password complexity by age, and the running average password complexity by age. Conclusions/Discussion Password complexity generally increased with age, but did not decline after age 60. After age 60, 50% of the passwords were better than the passwords from younger participants.

Summary statement

I devised an algorithm that determines the complexity of passwords and how this complexity changes based on the age of a user.

Help received

My parents helped gather most of the adult participants for my project. I also used a user-defined function, from an internet search, to determine if special characters were present in a cell in Excel.

Awards (1)

Competition history

  • CSEF 2016 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry J0409

Resources

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Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

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