Volume 14, Number 2

The Effectiveness of Applying Different Strategies on Recognition and Recall Textual Password

  Authors

Hassan Wasfi and Richard Stone, Iowa State University, USA

  Abstract

Using English words as passwords have been a popular topic in the last few years. The following article discusses a study to compare self-selection of the system-generated words for recognition and selfgenerated words for recall for nouns and mixture words. The results revealed no significant difference between recognition and recall of password nouns. The average memorability rate of noun recognition was 75.72%, slightly higher than noun recall 74.23% in long-term memory. Also, there was no significant difference between recognition and recall mixture word passwords. The average memorability rate of mixture word recognition was 95.23%, and recall was 84.14% in long-term memory. The authors concluded that the recognition and recall of mixed word passwords had a higher memorability rate than nouns.

  Keywords

Password, User behavior, Recognition, Recall, Nouns, Mixture Words, Passphrase.