Why Users (Don’t) Use Password Managers at a Large Educational Institution

We quantitatively investigated the current state of Password Manager (PM) usage and general password habits at a large, private university in the United States. Building on prior qualitative findings from SOUPS 2019, we survey n=277 faculty, staff, and students, finding that 77% of our participants already use PMs, but users of third-party PMs, as opposed to browser-based PMs, were significantly less likely to reuse their passwords across accounts. The largest factor encouraging PM adoption is perceived ease-of-use, indicating that communication and institutional campaigns should focus more on usability factors. Additionally, our work indicates the need for design improvements for browser-based PMs to encourage less password reuse as they are more widely adopted.