Over 70 percent of 35 leading cryptocurrency exchanges let users secure their accounts with inadequate passwords, according to a research by password manager app Dashlane, The Next Web reports.
The researchers found that 43 percent of exchanges let users create accounts using passwords with seven or fewer characters, and 34 percent do not require alphanumeric passwords.
The study further pointed out that testers were able to open trading accounts with weak passwords like “12345,” “password,” and in one case – just using the single letter “a.”
Dashlane has since ranked the password security requirements of these exchanges on a score from one to five.
“Signing up for a cryptocurrency exchange is akin to signing up for a bank account,” said Dashlane CEO Emmanuel Schalit.
“With your bank account, credit cards, Bitcoin (Bitcoin), and other digital assets potentially stored on the exchange, it’s critical that your account is locked down on the security front,” he added.
He said the fact that most exchanges allow their users to create incredibly weak passwords should serve as a wake-up call to the entire industry.
Previous research conducted by Dashlane discovered that 46 percent of all consumer websites have failed to implement even the most rudimentary password security policies. The list of offenders included giants like Google, Amazon, PayPal, Reddit, and more.