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Password fatigue is the feeling experienced by many people who are required to remember an excessive number of passwords as part of their daily routine, such as to logon to a computer at work, undo a bicycle lock or conduct banking from an automated teller machine (ATM). The concept is also known as password chaos or more broadly as identity chaos.[1]
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Fatigue Masks Fitness
Fatigue seems to occur in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. A 2014 study found a strong relationship between hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) and chronic fatigue in people with type 1 diabetes.
Causes[edit]
- Anti-fatigue mat reduces fatigue when standing, perfect for kitchens or standing desks Cushiony foam layer conforms to the contours of your feet Stain- and abrasion-resistant surface; easy to clean Non-curling edges so you won't trip. Non-slip base so the mat stays in one place Measures 36x20 inches (LxW).
- I heard that SSD drives can become fatigued and have data errors, if the same data block is used for reading and writing to many times. So, there are mechanisms to swap the often used blocks with the less often used blocks. One reference about SSD endurance and wear leveling is on this page.
The increasing prominence of information technology and the Internet in employment, finance, recreation and other aspects of people's lives, and the ensuing introduction of secure transaction technology, has led to people accumulating a proliferation of accounts and passwords.
According to a survey conducted in February 2020 by password manager Nordpass, a typical user has 100 passwords.[2]
Some factors causing password fatigue are:
- unexpected demands that a user create a new password
- unexpected demands that a user create a new password that uses particular pattern of letters, digits, and special characters
- demand that the user type the new password twice
- frequent and unexpected demands for the user to re-enter their password throughout the day as they surf to different parts of an intranet
- blind typing, both when responding to a password prompt and when setting a new password.
Related issues[edit]
Aside from contributing to stress, password fatigue may encourage people to adopt habits that reduce the security of their protected information. For example, an account holder might use the same password for several different accounts, deliberately choose easy-to-remember passwords that are too vulnerable to cracking, or rely on written records of their passwords.
Many sites, in an attempt to prevent users from choosing easy-to-guess passwords, add restrictions on password length or composition which contribute to password fatigue. In many cases, the restrictions placed on passwords actually serve to decrease the security of the account (either by preventing good passwords or by making the password so complex the user ends up storing it insecurely, such as on a post-it note). Some sites also block non-ASCII or non-alphanumeric characters.
Password fatigue will typically affect users, but it can also affect technical departments who manage user accounts as they are constantly reinitializing passwords; this situation ends up lowering morale in both cases. In many cases users, end up typing their passwords in cleartext in text files so as to not have to remember them or even writing them down on post-it notes which they then stick in a desk drawer.
Solutions[edit]
Some companies are well organized in this respect and have implemented alternative authentication methods[3] or have adopted technologies so that a user's credentials are entered automatically. However, others may not focus on ease of use, or even worsen the situation, by constantly implementing new applications with their own authentication system.
- (SSO) can help mitigate this problem by only requiring users to remember one password to an application that in turn will automatically give access to several other accounts, with or without the need for agent software on the user's computer. A potential disadvantage is that loss of a single password will prevent access to all services using the SSO system, and moreover theft or misuse of such a password presents a criminal or attacker with many targets.
- Integrated password management software - Many operating systems provide a mechanism to store and retrieve passwords by using the user's login password to unlock an encrypted password database. Microsoft Windows provides Credential Manager to store user names and passwords used to log on to websites or other computers on a network, Mac OS X has a Keychain feature that provides this functionality, and similar functionality is present in the GNOME and KDE open source desktops. In addition, web browser developers have added similar functionality to all of the major browsers. Although, if the user's system is corrupted, stolen or compromised, they can also lose access to sites where they rely on the password store or recovery features to remember their login data.
- Password management software such as KeePass, Password Safe and NordPass can help mitigate the problem of password fatigue by storing passwords in a database encrypted with a single password. However, this presents problems similar to that of Single sign-on in that losing the single password prevents access to all the other passwords while someone else gaining it will have access to them.
- Password recovery - The majority of password protected web services provide a password recovery feature that will allow users to recover their passwords via the email address (or other information) tied to that account. However, this system has itself become a target of social engineering attacks by criminals. These criminals obtain enough information about the target to impersonate them and request a reset email, which is then redirected through other means to an account under the attacker's control, enabling the attacker to hijack the account.
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^'Password chaos' at TheFreeDictionary
- ^Williams, Shannon. 'Average person has 100 passwords - study'. securitybrief.co.nz. Retrieved 2021-04-26.
- ^Such as digital certificates, OTP tokens, fingerprint authentication or password hints.
External links[edit]
- Noguchi, Yuki. Access Denied, Washington Post, 23 September 2006.
- Catone, Josh. Bad Form: 61% Use Same Password for Everything, 17 January 2008.
- identitychaos.com, MIIS & ILM blog
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Password_fatigue&oldid=1020006533'
It’s not just Zoom. Popular video chat platforms have design flaws that exhaust the human mind and body. But there are easy ways to mitigate their effects.
By Vignesh Ramachandran
Even as more people are logging onto popular video chat platforms to connect with colleagues, family and friends during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanford researchers have a warning for you: Those video calls are likely tiring you out.
Professor Jeremy Bailenson examined the psychological consequences of spending hours per day on Zoom and other popular video chat platforms. (Image credit: Getty Images)
Prompted by the recent boom in videoconferencing, communication Professor Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL), examined the psychological consequences of spending hours per day on these platforms. Just as “Googling” is something akin to any web search, the term “Zooming” has become ubiquitous and a generic verb to replace videoconferencing. Virtual meetings have skyrocketed, with hundreds of millions happening daily, as social distancing protocols have kept people apart physically.
Mac Os Versions
In the first peer-reviewed article that systematically deconstructs Zoom fatigue from a psychological perspective, published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior on Feb. 23, Bailenson has taken the medium apart and assessed Zoom on its individual technical aspects. He has identified four consequences of prolonged video chats that he says contribute to the feeling commonly known as “Zoom fatigue.”
Bailenson stressed that his goal is not to vilify any particular videoconferencing platform – he appreciates and uses tools like Zoom regularly – but to highlight how current implementations of videoconferencing technologies are exhausting and to suggest interface changes, many of which are simple to implement. Moreover, he provides suggestions for consumers and organizations on how to leverage the current features on videoconferences to decrease fatigue.
“Videoconferencing is a good thing for remote communication, but just think about the medium – just because you can use video doesn’t mean you have to,” Bailenson said.
Below are four primary reasons why video chats fatigue humans, according to the study. Readers are also invited to participate in a research study aimed at developing a Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale (ZEF) Scale.
Four reasons why
1) Excessive amounts of close-up eye contact is highly intense.
Mac Os Mojave
Both the amount of eye contact we engage in on video chats, as well as the size of faces on screens is unnatural.
In a normal meeting, people will variously be looking at the speaker, taking notes or looking elsewhere. But on Zoom calls, everyone is looking at everyone, all the time. A listener is treated nonverbally like a speaker, so even if you don’t speak once in a meeting, you are still looking at faces staring at you. The amount of eye contact is dramatically increased. “Social anxiety of public speaking is one of the biggest phobias that exists in our population,” Bailenson said. “When you’re standing up there and everybody’s staring at you, that’s a stressful experience.”
Another source of stress is that, depending on your monitor size and whether you’re using an external monitor, faces on videoconferencing calls can appear too large for comfort. “In general, for most setups, if it’s a one-on-one conversation when you’re with coworkers or even strangers on video, you’re seeing their face at a size which simulates a personal space that you normally experience when you’re with somebody intimately,” Bailenson said.
When someone’s face is that close to ours in real life, our brains interpret it as an intense situation that is either going to lead to mating or to conflict. “What’s happening, in effect, when you’re using Zoom for many, many hours is you’re in this hyper-aroused state,” Bailenson said.
Solution: Until the platforms change their interface, Bailenson recommends taking Zoom out of the full-screen option and reducing the size of the Zoom window relative to the monitor to minimize face size, and to use an external keyboard to allow an increase in the personal space bubble between oneself and the grid.
2)Seeing yourself during video chats constantly in real-time is fatiguing.
Most video platforms show a square of what you look like on camera during a chat. But that’s unnatural, Bailenson said. “In the real world, if somebody was following you around with a mirror constantly – so that while you were talking to people, making decisions, giving feedback, getting feedback – you were seeing yourself in a mirror, that would just be crazy. No one would ever consider that,” he added.
Bailenson cited studies showing that when you see a reflection of yourself, you are more critical of yourself. Many of us are now seeing ourselves on video chats for many hours every day. “It’s taxing on us. It’s stressful. And there’s lots of research showing that there are negative emotional consequences to seeing yourself in a mirror.”
Solution: Bailenson recommends that platforms change the default practice of beaming the video to both self and others, when it only needs to be sent to others. In the meantime, users should use the “hide self-view” button, which one can access by right-clicking their own photo, once they see their face is framed properly in the video.
3)Video chats dramatically reduce our usual mobility.
In-person and audio phone conversations allow humans to walk around and move. But with videoconferencing, most cameras have a set field of view, meaning a person has to generally stay in the same spot. Movement is limited in ways that are not natural. “There’s a growing research now that says when people are moving, they’re performing better cognitively,” Bailenson said.
Solution: Bailenson recommends people think more about the room they’re videoconferencing in, where the camera is positioned and whether things like an external keyboard can help create distance or flexibility. For example, an external camera farther away from the screen will allow you to pace and doodle in virtual meetings just like we do in real ones. And of course, turning one’s video off periodically during meetings is a good ground rule to set for groups, just to give oneself a brief nonverbal rest.
4)The cognitive load is much higher in video chats.
Bailenson notes that in regular face-to-face interaction, nonverbal communication is quite natural and each of us naturally makes and interprets gestures and nonverbal cues subconsciously. But in video chats, we have to work harder to send and receive signals.
In effect, Bailenson said, humans have taken one of the most natural things in the world – an in-person conversation – and transformed it into something that involves a lot of thought: “You’ve got to make sure that your head is framed within the center of the video. If you want to show someone that you are agreeing with them, you have to do an exaggerated nod or put your thumbs up. That adds cognitive load as you’re using mental calories in order to communicate.”
Gestures could also mean different things in a video meeting context. A sidelong glance to someone during an in-person meeting means something very different than a person on a video chat grid looking off-screen to their child who just walked into their home office.
Solution: During long stretches of meetings, give yourself an “audio only” break. “This is not simply you turning off your camera to take a break from having to be nonverbally active, but also turning your body away from the screen,” Bailenson said, “so that for a few minutes you are not smothered with gestures that are perceptually realistic but socially meaningless.”
ZEF Scale
Many organizations – including schools, large companies and government entities – have reached out to Stanford communication researchers to better understand how to create best practices for their particular videoconferencing setup and how to come up with institutional guidelines. Bailenson – along with Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab; Géraldine Fauville, former postdoctoral researcher at the VHIL; Mufan Luo; graduate student at Stanford; and Anna Queiroz, postdoc at VHIL – responded by devising the Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale, or ZEF Scale, to help measure how much fatigue people are experiencing in the workplace from videoconferencing.
The scale, detailed in a recent, not yet peer-reviewed paper published on the preprint website SSRN, advances research on how to measure fatigue from interpersonal technology, as well as what causes the fatigue. The scale is a 15-item questionnaire, which is freely available, and has been tested now across five separate studies over the past year with over 500 participants. It asks questions about a person’s general fatigue, physical fatigue, social fatigue, emotional fatigue and motivational fatigue. Some sample questions include:
- How exhausted do you feel after videoconferencing?
- How irritated do your eyes feel after videoconferencing?
- How much do you tend to avoid social situations after videoconferencing?
- How emotionally drained do you feel after videoconferencing?
- How often do you feel too tired to do other things after videoconferencing?
Hancock said results from the scale can help change the technology so the stressors are reduced.
He notes that humans have been here before. “When we first had elevators, we didn’t know whether we should stare at each other or not in that space. More recently, ridesharing has brought up questions about whether you talk to the driver or not, or whether to get in the back seat or the passenger seat,” Hancock explained. “We had to evolve ways to make it work for us. We’re in that era now with videoconferencing, and understanding the mechanisms will help us understand the optimal way to do things for different settings, different organizations and different kinds of meetings.”
“Hopefully, our work will contribute to uncovering the roots of this problem and help people adapt their videoconference practices to alleviate ‘Zoom fatigue,’” added Fauville, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. “This could also inform videoconference platform designers to challenge and rethink some of the paradigm videoconferences have been built on.”
If you are interested in measuring your own Zoom fatigue, you can take the survey here and participate in the research project.