How many people have taken the cute little re-post challenges on Facebook? The ones that seem harmless enough if you don’t stop and think about them. However, once you think about them, you realize they are asking for you to publicly post things like mother’s maiden name, favorite color, favorite sports team, and a ton of other personal preference questions.
Why should you avoid many of these questions? Simple, you are providing potential hackers or identity thieves with some great information. Don’t believe me? Go to your financial institution online security questions and compare them to some of the questions you may have responded to.
The following list is far from complete, but it should give a good idea of questions to not answer when posting something on Facebook. I don’t have my birth year visible on Facebook and I restrict as much as Facebook will let me.
Common security questions:
Mother’s maiden name
Father or mother’s middle name
Grandparent’s middle or first name
High School mascot
Favorite color
City where you were married
Where you were born
Favorite sports team
Child’s name (sometimes a specific child – youngest, oldest; or maybe their middle name)
Nickname
What is the first and last name of your first boyfriend or girlfriend?
Phone number (current or past one)
Favorite place to visit (child or adult)
Favorite celebrity (actor, musician, artist)
Favorite pet or pet’s name
First pet’s name
Name of your first school
What street did you grow up on?
What is your anniversary?
Favorite movie or song or book
Make of your first car
Name of your high school
Favorite web browser
First job or employer
Birthday, ranging from year, month, or day to the full date
There are a few more that I don’t recall at the moment, but basically anything that would be easy for you to have a strong memory of an event, name, location, or date.
If you want another test, look for car insurance online. When I review my car insurance twice a year, I check out various insurance websites and most of them can pick out my car with almost no information and it doesn’t matter if I am using a different computer or device for the first time. Sometimes with as little as name, zip code, and maybe last four of Social Security Number, they have my vehicle. Occasionally, it takes a bit more, but rarely does it take anywhere near enough information in my opinion.
What some people do to reduce the above security risk is to use bogus information as the answer to the security questions. That works great as long as you remember the bogus answers you came up with.
For those who use passwords, do a search on 500 passwords to avoid and make sure you aren’t using any of them. A new list shows up each year as some drop off the list, or move up or down the list. Sadly, some of the most common ones stay on the list year after year.
Ups Downs Family History 