What are your favorite password recovery questions and answers?

[jberryhill]

You know those things like favorite song, favorite movie, and so forth that are used on some websites for security confirmation?

Those things.

For ones that let you choose the question, what question and answers do you use?

I'll start with the one i use for every secure website:


How did your account get hacked?

Because I answered a shedload of 'what's your favorite X' questions on a public website.

Now, I realize many people know this, and treat these as an exercise in "snappy answers to stupid questions" (if you remember that MAD Magazine feature).

But for those who don't, there are some kinds of things that hackers didn't get from Equifax, that they still might need.

[Moostache]

1. Who is worst POTUS ever?

A: are you kidding? If u have to ask, then you can go die with the answer

[longship]

2. The best way to be hacked -- reveal your password recovery question.

There. That's it.

[petronius]

3. Wait, so that Buzzfeed quiz where I entered my five favorite

passwords to figure out which TeleTubbie I am could have been a scam!??

(On second thought, it was odd that I had to enter my DOB and SSN to get the results...)

[Leith]

4. Snicker!

Nice try...

I'm not falling for this.

Again.

[True Dough]

5. Question: What's your favorite discussion forum?

Answer: The Democratic Overground

See how I threw that curve in there to throw off hackers? I IS SMAHT!!

[jpak]

6. Can jberryhill carve wood like an Asian man?

[jberryhill]

9. I carve wood like this

[csziggy]

7. My key to those password questions is to lie

My first pet was NOT named what I put down. No, that was not my mother's maiden name. I've never lived on that street or in that town that I entered.

They do not need true answers, just ones that you can remember.

So even if I might answer questions truthfully on websites like CU it will not help them get into my accounts. Of course, I might also lie when answering those questions, the same way I lie in response to my password recovery questions.

Who will know?

[jberryhill]

8. My problem is that I don't tend to have categorical "favorites"

Like - "What's your favorite movie?"

Well, shit... what would I have entered that I'd think was my favorite that day. I dunno. You could ask me at five different times and get five different answers, really.

Or "Who was your favorite teacher?"

My thought process is always... Um, you mean, like in K-12, undergrad, grad school, or law school? Shit, I think I calculated once that I was in, like, 28th grade or something? I have a lot of favorites.

When I was in, like first grade or so, I was asked what is my favorite color. Well, fuck, they're all great. It's not like you'd want everything to be one color anyway. But, seeing as everyone else had one, and the general social pressure to express a "favorite", I decided I'd just pick one and stick with it as an answer. So, and I kid you not, I have gone through life saying my favorite color is "blue", even though I honestly never could give a goddamned flying frog's fart about the question one way or another.

But, and this is also true, anybody who follows up with "what shade of blue?" is, in my opinion, just looking for trouble, and I'll say "all of them".

Those questions are utterly useless to me, as there is just no way I remember the answers, even if I did just make them up on the spot.

They need to have ones that reflect real people's lives, like:

What was the make of your sister's husband's ex-wife's sister's husband's pickup truck?

THAT is a question I can actually answer.

It was a nasty-ass Dodge that pulled to one side and had a shitload of rust. But he will loan it to you if you need it, being family and all.