The need to create and manage more and more passwords is one of the distinct downsides to living your life online. When it comes to password creation we all have our own strategies but in the survey we tried to get a sense of the elements people were using. We asked: "Which of the following do you use when creating a password for an online account?"

• Something unique and random: 39%
• Familiar name (e.g. of person, pet, or place): 21%
• Name of a location: 6%
• Sports team: 5%
• Something else: 37%
• Decline to answer: 19%

Again, I think these numbers are somewhat encouraging. The use of a familiar name is too high, but the number of people who were using something random, unique, or outside of the other categories was better than I expected. I also liked that almost 1 in 5 people declined to answer. The responses were pretty much the same across different demographic groups but, perhaps not surprisngly, men were more likely than women to use a sports team (7% to 4%). Women more likely to use a familiar name than men (24% to 16%).