A Second Look at the Usability of Click-Based Graphical Passwords

Click-based graphical passwords have been proposed as a usable alternative to text passwords. The authors conducted two user studies: an initial lab study to revisit these usability claims, explore for the first time the impact on usability of a wide-range of images, and gather information about the points selected by users; and a large-scale field study that examined how click-based graphical passwords work in practice. No such prior field studies have been reported in the literature. They found significant differences in the usability results of the two studies, providing empirical evidence that relying solely on lab studies for security interfaces can be problematic.