Strange question and unless you are a porn-star you probably don’t have one?!
However, we probably know the joke. Take your first pets name and your mothers maiden name and hey presto! That (apparently) would be your porn-star name (please don’t send me these on comments!).
What a hoot!
However, have you ever had to use a ‘personal secret’ alongside your username and password when creating an online account? Normally for password recovery reasons? Have you ever had the option of using a pets name or your mothers maiden name in this situation? Possibly a lot of the time?
How about?
- Where you were born?
- Which school did you attend?
- What year were you born?
- A memorable moment?
- Favourite colour?
- Best friends name?
All of these seem familiar right? And all of them are used in the process of you gaining access to an online resource if you forget or need to reset your password.
It’s not a new thing – but anybody also get tempted on Facebook to play the random question posts or games that get you to work out things like: ‘Your Fairy Name’ or ‘The year that you are going to die?’ etc …
Other recent favourites are:
- Something interesting about the town you were born in without naming the town
- Reverse the numbers in your age
- Favourite colour and last thing you ate to work out your super hero name
- Colour of your pants and pets name for your Rock Band name
Do you ever stop to wonder when you get the hilarious results – where the data you submitted ends up, who has access to it and what happens to it? Have you noticed how many people can see your comments in the shared posts?
Anybody now realise that what you are telling anonymous data-miners are (sometimes not directly) the recovery words for your accounts to bypass your password?
It’s a risky game we play.
I am pleased to see that some of my Facebook friends are wise to this. But alas the vast majority are not. So here is my message:
When you see the games that ‘Decide what animal you would be’, ‘Calculate your mental age’, or work out ‘Your porn star name’ on Social Media – if you want to play along – do it on a piece of paper at home and don’t post and repost it for millions of people to see (and use).
That way you can still have a laugh and tell your family over dinner and hopefully you can trust them not to hack your accounts during pudding.
Another great idea is to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) (or 2-factor authentication (2FA)) on your online accounts. There are very few that don’t do this now and Facebook is a great starting point if you haven’t already done so. Check out the ‘Security and login’ settings in the Account settings and make it happen.
But also don’t make it easy for people you don’t know or trust to start guessing things about you.
Have fun – but stay safe doing so!
