A Pilot Study of Multiple Password Interference Between Text and Map-Based Passwords

Today’s computer users have to remember several passwords for each of their accounts. It is easily noticed that people may have difficulty in remembering multiple passwords, which result in a weak password selection. Previous studies have shown that recall success rates are not statistically dissimilar between textual passwords and graphical passwords.

With the advent of map-based graphical passwords, this paper focuses on multiple password interference and presents a pilot study consisting of 60 participants to study the recall of multiple passwords between text passwords and map-based passwords under various account scenarios. Each participant has to create six distinct passwords for different account scenarios.

It is found that participants in the map-based graphical password scheme could perform better than the textual password scheme in both short-term (one-hour session) and long term (after two weeks) password memorability tests (i.e., they made higher success rates). Our effort attempts to complement existing studies and stimulate more research on this issue.