So Much Promise, So Little Use: What is Stopping Home End-Users from Using Password Manager Applications?

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the voluntary use of password management applications in order to address a decades-old and ubiquitous information security problem related to poor password management. In our exploratory analysis, we investigate two related issues: (1) why home end-users chose not to use password management applications and (2) why high behavioral intentions to use password management applications did not always lead to actual usage for certain users. We found that issues related to the technology such as lack of trust or memory limitations, individual issues such as perceived costs and benefits, and a lack of concern about the threat (threat apathy) were the primary inhibitors of lack of use. For those that had high intentions to use a password management application but failed to actually use the software, we found that a variety of individual issues such as lack of immediacy and having insufficient time were the primary inhibitors leading to this breakdown.