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Vulnerability of Secret Questions

9.27.21 | by Lance Fogarty

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Key Takeaways

• Vulnerability of Secret Questions: The widespread availability of personal information on the internet, through sites like BeenVerified and social media platforms, makes secret questions a weak security measure. Hackers can easily access and exploit this data to answer common secret questions, compromising account security.
• Risks of Social Media Interaction: Engaging with seemingly harmless social media posts that ask for personal details, such as your first job or car, can inadvertently provide hackers with answers to common secret questions. Being cautious about sharing information on social media is crucial to protect against identity theft and other cyber threats.

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With the proliferation of personal information available on the Internet, your secret questions could be failing you. For one, there are a multitude of websites housing large databases of your historical information. BeenVerified is only one of many websites whose focus is collecting and publishing, for profit, information about you collected and consolidated from a variety of public resources. Your birthdate, location of birth, mother’s maiden name, father’s middle name, the street you grew up on, and more are all openly available.

Further weakening your secret questions, identity thieves and hackers are polling social media to obtain more background information about you. The graphics below depict hackers attempting to gather answers to your secret questions. The McDonalds Facebook post clearly shows over 1.1 million users providing their first employment to these scammers. Both your first job and first car are common secret questions.

Because these posts were public, responding, even sarcastically, will expand their reach to others that may not realize it is a scam. Take extreme care when sharing information on social media.

Solutions to the vulnerability of secret questions, password generation and management, and multi-factor authentication will be available in the upcoming post titled “Are We Safe from Hackers?“