A recent survey revealed that the average Brit has 26 online accounts, but only uses five different passwords to maintain all if these accounts. The same survey showed that one in 25 uses a single password for all accounts on the web. Two thirds of those surveyed said that they had unused profiles (including old social network profiles, email addresses and shopping accounts) that still held up-to-date personal and financial information.

Using the same password for more than one profile increases the risk of other profiles being compromised and ultimately to the user being a victim of identity theft. Last.fm, eHarmony, LinkedIn and Yahoo!Voices have all had password security breaches recently with hundreds of thousands of login details being stolen. Microsoft estimates that 20% of the passwords leaked on to lists of compromised login credentials also matched the details on Microsoft accounts, because of the reuse of passwords.

It is recommended that passwords should not be reused for several accounts. Common words, phrases or names should not be used, and ideally passwords should comprise a mixture of upper and lower case letters along with numbers and punctuation characters where possible.

If you have any questions about updating your Calico UK accounts, then please email us at [email protected] or call our helpdesk team on 01381 600580.