Use False Answers to Your Online Safety Questions

Registration processes for online banking accounts, new email addresses, or health insurance applications include several additional security measures to protect valuable data within those accounts. Unfortunately, the security questions they answer you are not entirely secure. Your mother’s maiden name simply isn’t shortened anymore and, according to the New York Times , could cost you your credit rating if someone gains access to your personal information. It’s time to strengthen your security questions so that attackers don’t get into your accounts.

Security issues ask for information about your real life, information that anyone can easily access either through social media or through data breaches such as the recent Equifax disaster. It’s not hard to figure out which car you drove in college or your mother’s maiden name (she’s probably on her Facebook page). Answering the truth is not a good idea, although you can always try a different approach before getting down to business.

Just lie – with a password manager

Your first car? Just write the car of your dreams or the car you plan to buy. Mother’s maiden name? Easy, just say that tedious, sweet term she used to call you before asking you to prepare the dishes. Until these answers are searchable, you should generate incorrect answers and keep them safe.

Of course, you want to be sure that you can track any false responses you come up with, and the security of new false responses means keeping them along with the rest of your data. Contact your favorite password manager to save your security questions and answers (or generate better ones). You can create a spreadsheet for all of them, or just write your questions and false answers in the note box of the respective site or service (assuming you already have them in the manager of your choice).

For extra peace of mind, you should use the password generator in your password manager to generate more varied responses than simply using “wrong” answers. Fe5h & R <v1 is harder to guess than Meredith, even if both names are not a valid name for your prom date.

Your mother’s maiden name is no secret.

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