# Age and Gender Impact on Password Hygiene
## 3 Results
### Age and Gender Analysis  
Due to the sample size (\(N=92,816\)), one could consider the distribution of the data to represent a normal population distribution [32]. Except for the peaks of randomly generated passwords of strength 8, both genders visually show normal distributions (Figure 3) but violate the Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness-of-fit-test for normality (\(\text{KS}=0.122\ p<0.001\)). Due to the number of cases, parametric analysis can be used since power, the low probability of type I errors, and a realistic effect size estimation are present with large samples [33]. Descriptive statistics is given in Table 5. Overall, the average strength of passwords (\(5.91\pm 2.16\)) corresponds to a six-character-long random password and should be considered as very weak, even though the average length of recovered passwords is 9.12 characters. Some differences between genders could be observed. The password strength of male users consistently exceeds the password strength of female users for every age group (see Figure 4). Males significantly had stronger passwords than females (\(t=-17.66\), \(p<0.001\) [PERSON]'s \(d=0.123\)). This observation entails that 55% of males have stronger passwords than females, which is higher than chance alone (50%). On average, the difference of strengths measured as the base 10 logarithm of the number of guesses is 0.266. In other words, male users are more likely to use passwords almost twice as difficult to guess compared with those of female users (\(10^{0.266}=1.85\)). As a result, we recovered 91.5% passwords of male users and 94.8% of female users. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Char** & **Count** & **Freq \%** & **Char** & **Count** & **Freq \%** & **Char** & **Count** & **Freq \%** & **Char** & **Count** & **Freq \%** \\ \hline a & 31,081 & 8.08 & 4 & 6012 & 1.56 & V & 2568 & 0.67 & \# & 19 & 0.005 \\ s & 20,521 & 5.33 & v & 5753 & 1.49 & C & 2553 & 0.66 & \% & 18 & 0.005 \\ i & 17,970 & 4.67 & p & 5583 & 1.45 & N & 2544 & 0.66 & / & 15 & 0.004 \\
1 & 15,516 & 4.03 & c & 4768 & 1.24 & I & 2526 & 0.66 & ) & 14 & 0.004 \\ e & 14,785 & 3.84 & y & 4749 & 1.23 & U & 2486 & 0.65 & space & 11 & 0.003 \\ r & 11,869 & 3.08 & z & 4641 & 1.21 & J & 2437 & 0.63 & : & 10 & 0.003 \\ u & 11,467 & 2.98 & j & 4589 & 1.19 & H & 2413 & 0.63 & = & 8 & 0.002 \\ n & 10,956 & 2.85 & f & 3482 & 0.90 & O & 2391 & 0.62 & ; & 8 & 0.002 \\ t & 10,787 & 2.80 & h & 3478 & 0.90 & F & 2389 & 0.62 & \& 6 & 0.002 \\ l & 10,466 & 2.72 & x & 3236 & 0.84 & Z & 2375 & 0.62 & ( & 5 & 0.0013 \\
2 & 10,287 & 2.67 & w & 3071 & 0.80 & X & 2325 & 0.6 & \(>\) & 3 & 0.0008 \\ k & 10,215 & 2.65 & A & 3029 & 0.79 & W & 2313 & 0.6 & \(\backslash\) & 3 & 0.0008 \\ o & 10,163 & 2.64 & M & 2866 & 0.74 & Q & 2289 & 0.59 & \({}^{\prime}\) & 2 & 0.0005 \\
0 & 8864 & 2.30 & S & 2844 & 0.74 & Y & 2239 & 0.58 & [ & 2 & 0.0005 \\ m & 8847 & 2.30 & L & 2724 & 0.71 & - & 151 & 0.04 & \(\sim\) & 2 & 0.0005 \\
3 & 8202 & 2.13 & K & 2654 & 0.69 & @ & 131 & 0.03 & \{ & 2 & 0.0005 \\
9 & 7742 & 2.01 & P & 2630 & 0.68 & - & 87 & 0.02 & ] & 2 & 0.0005 \\ d & 7727 & 2.01 & R & 2626 & 0.68 &! & 80 & 0.02 & \(<\) & 1 & 0.0003 \\
5 & 6981 & 1.81 & D & 2624 & 0.68 & * & 75 & 0.02 & \(\downarrow\) & 1 & 0.0003 \\
7 & 6367 & 1.65 & q & 2623 & 0.68 &? & 50 & 0.01 & \(\sim\) & 1 & 0.0003 \\ b & 6294 & 1.64 & T & 2619 & 0.68 & – & 44 & 0.01 & \(\sim\) & 1 & 0.0003 \\
8 & 6283 & 1.63 & E & 2615 & 0.68 & + & 40 & 0.01 & \(\sim\) & 1 & 0.0003 \\ g & 6202 & 1.61 & B & 2605 & 0.68 & \$ & 24 & 0.01 & \(\sim\) & 0 & 0 \\
6 & 6158 & 1.60 & G & 2597 & 0.67 &, & 19 & 0.005 & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 4: Character count and frequency within 50,547 passwords of eight characters or less. Users between 25 and 35 years old had the strongest passwords. The average strength is reduced for younger users. This was not statistically significant for females, but it followed a well-pronounced linear path for male users (Male, 25 years or younger: \(R=0.044\), \(F=33.82\), \(p<0.001\), \(\beta=0.044\)).