People often create passwords for their accounts that are insecure. An insecure password is often easy to guess -thus, hackers can easily access their victims' accounts. It is important for users to know how to create and manage secure passwords so they can better protect themselves from hackers. It is well-known that different users have different personality types, such as Big Five and True Colors. This research examines if there is any link between personality types and password security behavior. Each participant was shown either a matching or mismatching message based on their personality type, and it was measured whether their password security behavior changed a month later. Our results show that 66% of participants with a Green (knowledgeable and competent) personality type chose a strong password, compared to less than 50% of other personality types. Our results also demonstrate that messaging has a statistical impact on improving password security behavior.

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People have many accounts and usually need to create a password for each. They tend to create insecure passwords and re-use passwords, which can lead to compromised data. This research examines if there is a link between personality type and password security among a variety of participants in two groups of participants: SONA and MTurk. Each participant in both surveys answered questions based on password security and their personality type. Our results show that participants in the MTurk survey were more likely to choose a strong password and to exhibit better security behaviors and knowledge than participants in the SONA survey. This is mostly attributed to the age difference. However, the distribution of the results was similar for both MTurk and SONA. In the second part of our study, we found that security behaviors actually went down -this could be due to the pandemic or indicative of a need for more regular messaging/training.