New research carried out by Opinium for Moneysupermarket has revealed that the average Brit subscribes to seven Internet services, such as online banking or shopping sites, while almost 30% subscribe to even more. However 18% still used the same password for all their accounts.

Just 12% of people used the recommended secure mix of numbers, capitals and lower case letters when creating their passwords. This fell to 9% for those in their 60's and 8% for those over the age of 70.

Elsewhere 16% of people with wireless (Wi-Fi) routers are failing to put a password on their connection and 11% admitted to having used someone else's wireless Internet connection without permission in the past 12 months.

Naturally using a different and complicated password for each service can make them difficult to remember. Most services will also offer a facility to help recover your password if lost or forgotten, usually via the registered e-mail address. Using the same password for everything just isn’t worth the risk.