What Keeps People From Using Password Managers?
Many of us are vulnerable to hackers and eager to secure our online accounts, but lots of us also refuse to use an obvious solution: password managers. Our research has found that the typical reassurances and promises about password managers just dont work. Fortunately, our research also suggests there are strategies that can persuade people to get past the psychological barriers and keep their data safe. For the unfamiliar, a password manager stores your passwords securely and lets you access them with just one master password. Some password managers will fill in your password for you when you go to a website where you already have an account, and some will generate a strong password on your behalf. Not so simple  In a study I conducted with my Ph.D. student Norah Alkaldi, we found that the two most common methods of persuasion were ineffective in getting people to adopt password managers. The first is the push approachthe idea that by showing people the dangers of using simple passwords, recording passwords on their computer or using the same passwords at different sites, we would push them to adopt a safer approach. Users, we found, dont respond to the push strategy. The other, pull, approachfocusing on the positives of password managersdidnt deliver any better results.