Not so secret questions
A short post on my continuing series about improving your online security.
Bank online? Does this ring any bells?
Before the internet become mainstream security questions like Where were you born and What was the name of your first pet were a perfectly fine way of gaining confidence you are who you say you are.
However, with the rise and rise of social media I believe they’re becoming a frail means of authentication.
You might be very careful with what you share, on social media, but you have little control over what your friends share, and their friends share.
There is a saving grace however. Those little questions are basically just more passwords. There’s no reason why you can’t just put something completely unrelated there.
If you’ve been following my experiment with KeePass you might be interested to know that you can store additional data alongside your bank login details.
I would suggest using the KeePass random password generator to create a difficult to guess (actually nigh on impossible!) word to use for your secret answer. Simple use the Tools > Generate Password and save it alongside your KeePass login credentials for the website.
Of course if you need to telephone your bank, you may find it difficult to explain your first pet was called ZAVFzD8ebAYjqbSnae7n 