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Parents, Passwords, and Parenting: How Parents Think about Passwords and are Involved in Their Children’s Password Practices

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HCI for Cybersecurity, Privacy and Trust (HCII 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14045))

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Abstract

Though much is known about how adults understand and use passwords, little research attention has been paid specifically to parents or, more importantly, to how parents are involved in their children’s password practices. To better understand both the password practices of parents, as well as how parents are involved in their children’s password practices, we conducted a survey study of 265 parents in the United States (US) with school-aged children (kindergarten through 12th grade, 5 to 18 years old). We asked parents about their general technology use, the kinds of technologies and password-protected accounts they have; how they make and maintain their passwords; and about how, if at all, they help their children create and maintain passwords. We found that parent password practices align with research surrounding adult password practices, and that parents, especially those of younger children, are very involved in the creation and maintenance of their children’s passwords. With these findings, we conclude with both recommendations for future research, as well as a call for the cybersecurity community to better support parents’ password understandings and practices so that parents can better support their children.

This material is based on work supported by the UMD and NIST Professional Research Experience Program (PREP) under Award Number 70NANB18H165.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Both parents and legal guardians are referred to as “parents” hereafter throughout the paper.

  2. 2.

    https://www.bennish.net/password-strength-checker/.

  3. 3.

    In cases in which the Chi Square test could not be run due to small cell sizes, Fisher’s exact tests were conducted. In some cases, p-values were simulated to ascertain statistical significance.

  4. 4.

    Due to small cell sizes, “not important” and “neutral” items were combined for follow-up analysis. This yielded a significant Chi-Square χ2(2)=12.9, p<.01.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA

    Yee-Yin Choong & Kerrianne Buchanan

  2. University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Olivia Williams

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  1. Yee-Yin Choong
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  2. Kerrianne Buchanan
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  3. Olivia Williams
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Correspondence to Yee-Yin Choong .

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  1. San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, USA

    Abbas Moallem

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Choong, YY., Buchanan, K., Williams, O. (2023). Parents, Passwords, and Parenting: How Parents Think about Passwords and are Involved in Their Children’s Password Practices. In: Moallem, A. (eds) HCI for Cybersecurity, Privacy and Trust. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14045. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35822-7_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35822-7_3

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