Honesty Is Not The Best Policy For Security Questions

You understand the need for strong passwords to safeguard your personal data. But, are you aware of the risk posed by security questions? These questions are common, very problematic and quite simply not secure. Most of the security questions employ very simple and personal questions like, “What’s your pet’s name?” or, “What street did you grow up on?” Security questions were originally intended as a tool for recovering forgotten passwords, but today these provided cybercriminals with more hacking opportunities. If you provide honest answers to these questions, you are putting your data at risk.

Remember that quiz you took on Facebook about where you grew up? How about those posts of your new cute puppy Fido and all those great stories with your family? These are all examples of information posted to your social media accounts that may provide the answers needed by hackers to compromise your data.  Since you usually cannot skip these questions, the best defense is to LIE by creating random responses. Until websites do away with them, honesty is NOT the best policy.

Lie or make up random answers.

Use spaces if possible.

Apply complex password rules to your answer.

DON’T reuse your answers across sites or applications.

Record your answers in a password manager.