Tyler Uebele

Have you ever noticed how security questions on your most critical accounts (f.e. your bank website) seem to require such insecure answers?

• What's your mother's maiden name?
• What's your pet's name?
• On which street did you grow up?

These always struck me as questions that could easily be answered by a resourceful person with access to my social circle, or the internet. Why then would I put up these answers to protect my life's savings?

I would not. I do not.

Early on I decided to give false answers to security questions. First I tried derivative answers, that is an answer that the correct answer reminded me of. This system seemed dangerously easy to forget. My next idea has endured; I reform the question itself as the answer. The key here is that only I know how I reform the question, so only I can answer it: even my own mother cannot tell my bank what my mother's maiden name is.

For an example of this that doesn't betray my method, I link the below; a description of someone else's.

algorithms for dumb security questions