Remembering every password for all of the websites and online services can be a real pain in the rear.

Researchers are studying ways in which recalling information about you recent texts and phone calls could be an effective way to access your account while keeping hackers at bay.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in West Bengal, India, and the University of Texas at Austin are working on technology that would enable a user to replace traditional internet passwords by recalling recent smartphone tasks. Instead of remembering long complicated passwords, you could answer: Which of your friends liked your Facebook post yesterday?

Some of these tasks could be as simple as recalling recent calls and texts, downloaded songs, Facebook likes, and websites visited. When asked simple questions such as "Whom did you receive a SMS from this morning?", users answered correctly 95% of the time.

Choudhury added that researchers are now speaking with companies like Yahoo and Intel to figure out how this technology could be used and how it could be implemented.

The technology could be used for password retrieval, researchers said.

Source: Streetwise