Half of UK adults never change their router password

Security? We've heard of it

More than half of all consumers never change the default WiFi password on their home broadband routers.

Statistics from component and electronic supplier Reichelt Elektronik suggest that 55 per cent of UK adults will stick with the out-of-the-box password and most don't use any kind of two-factor authentication.

Fifteen per cent of the 1,000 adults surveyed, amazingly, admitted that they don't use any security at all and only 22 per cent change it more than once every two years.

But education on home networking is sadly lacking. Just 24 per cent said they knew how to change the router username. Thirteen per cent knew how to hide their SSID and 37 per cent knew about router firewalls.

And of the 50 per cent that knew they should be doing all this stuff, only 39 per cent do it.

Notably, in the younger age groups, just as attitudes to privacy have changed online, so have our attitudes to security. Seventy-seven per cent of millennials share their WiFi password with friends and family and, while more and more routers now come with a Guest Network option, many choose not to have it turned on.

Millenials - who should know better - do seem to be the biggest culprits.

Sixty-five per cent never change their password, compared with 50 per cent in the 45-54 age group. Equally, it's the oldies who are more likely to keep their router software up to date - not the supposedly digital natives.

Ulf Timmermann, CEO of Reichelt Elektronik, warns: "More and more people are accessing the internet via their WiFi at home every single day. Simply relying on a password as your sole security method at home puts WiFi users at risk as launch passwords are easy for hackers to break."

The OnePoll survey was carried out in July 2017.

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