What would you do if you had a little less than four minutes to spend? Would you make popcorn in the microwave, reply to a few emails, read a few pages from your favorite book, or spend quality time with the people you love? We do not think that resetting your password is among all these scenarios that come to mind.

How Long Does Password Reset Take?

But, ExpressVPN According to a recent survey conducted by; A person spends an average of three minutes and 46 seconds each time to reset the account they forgot the password.

While spending a few minutes didn't seem like a problem (we've all experienced it—probably more than once), the majority of our survey respondents admitted to using the “forgot password” steps more than once.

Why do we forget our passwords?

There are several apps that increase the likelihood of forgetting our passwords, and they're not all bad:

Setting complex passwords to make our accounts more secure
Having to remember many different passwords on various platforms
Relying too heavily on biometrics to log into our digital accounts and forgetting our manual login details

We've been resetting our passwords for decades, and that need will not end. This method is still a safe and easy way for websites to gain access to your account in case you forget the password. But this means that the more our lives move into the digital world, the more time we lose.

ExpressVPN conducted a survey of 8.000 people in the US, UK, France, and Germany to better understand the consequences of resetting a forgotten password. This group offers insight into common password usage as well as what we can do for forgotten passwords when we lose them.

People spend hours each year resetting passwords

In four countries, the average time it takes to change a password is three minutes and 46 seconds, while it takes longer in the US, with 37% of respondents saying it took more than four minutes to change a password, and 7% said it took more than 10 minutes.

When asked about frequency, we learned that 52% of US respondents reset their passwords at least once a month—similar to France (53%) and the UK (50%). But it turns out that Germans forget their passwords less often, with only 35% saying they reset their passwords at least once a month.

Among our US respondents, 21% stated that they change their passwords more than once a week, while 14% agreed that they reset it at least once a day. This last figure equates to a person's spending of 21 hours each year.

Worse still, 4% of Americans admitted to resetting their forgotten passwords more than four times a day. That's three and a half days (or 84 hours) a year.

The most frequently forgotten passwords: banking

You need to make an urgent money transfer. You turn on your computer, pour your coffee, sit on your couch and are ready to enter your bank account. But you cannot enter. It's been so long since you've logged into your account that you've completely forgotten your password.

For the vast majority of respondents in the four countries, this is all too familiar. Nearly 30% stated that internet banking information is the type of website or application they forget the most. This number; larger than numbers for social media (24%), online shopping (16%), helpful sites and apps (9%), and online gaming (8%).

Interestingly, only 7% of respondents reported that the password they need to reset most often is for their work account. This is likely because users need to log into their work account frequently, which prevents them from forgetting that password. Another possible reason is the widespread use of password managers or one-time login services in the workplace, both of which allow users to access multiple accounts by remembering a single password.

So, what do we do when we forget a password?

Password recovery and damage control

While passwords are easy to forget, more than three-quarters of respondents are confident in knowing the answers to security questions they've set before. Even if this is true, users face many other hurdles when they forget their passwords.

More than 75% of US respondents said their account was locked after entering their password incorrectly. This means different things depending on the account: wait a while before trying again; having to reset; having to reach out to the company via different methods such as phone or e-mail.

The next thing to do is not always clear. 48% of US respondents reported turning to a friend (10%), a family member (16%), or a customer representative (21%) for help when they forgot their password.

When they manage to reset the password they forgot; More than 40% of American, British, and German respondents said they had manually created an entirely new, unique password or did so using a password generator, which is the most useful method. However, the French stated that they reset their passwords with an easier (and less secure) approach by making a small change to their original password.

Although it was strongly suggested that we should not reuse passwords, 16% of Germans, 12% of French, and more than 10% of American and British respondents said they used a password from a different account when they reset their passwords.

Resetting password is the most frustrating thing

Is there anything more frustrating than constantly resetting a password? Not much for our American, British and French attendees.

Most respondents (35%) said slow internet speed was the only thing more frustrating than resetting their online account password. This is followed by being told that the new password cannot be the same as the old password when resetting the password (25%).

In contrast, many German respondents found slow internet speed (34%), losing their car key (34%) and waiting in traffic (25%) more frustrating than forgetting a password (19%).

It's ingrained in us to hate it while doing what we consider a waste of time. This is because we know that this time can be spent on better things. So where do we spend this time?

Time better spent

We asked our participants what they would do if they regained the time they lost while resetting their passwords. Most said they would:

Spending time with family and friends (30%)
Reading a book (16%)
Take a short walk (14%)
Doing daily chores (12%)
Trying a new hobby (8%)

In other words, instead of feeling the fear, anxiety and tension caused by forgetting a password, most of us prefer to participate in activities that contribute to our physical and mental health during this time. This is also very reasonable.

The only downside is that close to 32% of respondents consider resetting a password as a normal part of life, while another 20% think they can't do anything to avoid resetting passwords.

The easiest way to save your passwords

In most of the last 20 years; We've been told that we need to create complex passwords that contain random characters made up of upper and lower case letters and symbols, because they're harder to crack. This has resulted in passwords like “KJaerz&53$*647>” becoming the sacred target of authentication.

We can argue about the accuracy of adding symbols and whether something like “correct horse battery staple” is just as good, but one thing is certain: passwords should be long (we recommend 17 characters), and unique (not used on other accounts). The only problem is remembering them. Remembering strong passwords is nearly impossible, especially when you have many passwords.

This is where the password manager comes into play.

Experts point out that, along with the fact that password managers are the most secure way to store passwords, thanks to strong encryption, using a password manager can give you access to all your other passwords by remembering a single password.

Additionally, most password managers automatically fill in the login fields for the sites and services you use, which is a great convenience.

I mean, what's the easiest way to remember passwords? The answer, it turns out, was not having to remember them.

How Much Time Do You Spend Resetting Your Passwords?