31–40 of 207 posts
A good idea to counteract privacy risks of this sort is to occasionally search yourself by your full name or by username (one that can be traced back to you, that is) across all major search engines and see if any of your data is out in the open in any public forum. Same goes for searching your phone numbers, physical addresses and your email address (preferably in double-quotes for an exact match) -- I discovered mi…
A good idea to counteract privacy risks of this sort is to occasionally search yourself by your full name or by username (one that can be traced back to you, that is) across all major search engines and see if any of your data is out in the open in any public forum. Same goes for searching your phone numbers, physical addresses and your email address (preferably in double-quotes for an exact match) -- I discovered mi…
Google provides a way to "subscribe" to email notifications of new search results for a given term (don't have the link handy right now). I've been subscribed to results for my full name for many years, and occasionally get an email of a new mention here and there.
A good idea to counteract privacy risks of this sort is to occasionally search yourself by your full name or by username (one that can be traced back to you, that is) across all major search engines and see if any of your data is out in the open in any public forum. Same goes for searching your phone numbers, physical addresses and your email address (preferably in double-quotes for an exact match) -- I discovered mi…
What was the mechanism by which you reported it?
My apologies, should have made that clear in my earlier response.
The whole "secret question" thing seemed to me to a completely stupid idea from the start. "Hey, give us password. If you forget your password, give us a much, much less secure way to access your account." I've always given false info to those, when I bother to fill them out at all. If necessary, I just store this false info along with the password in the encrypted file I keep my passwords in. The security questions…
SMS-based 2FA should be avoided as much as possible, since there are many ways to take over a phone number and get a hold of the code. Passwords, while being a huge hassle, is probably going to be the defacto authentication mechanism for sites and services (unfortunately). Maybe some sort of distributed PKI authentication + 2FA combo would be an interesting solution, but the problem would be adoption.
It's disgusting how twisted these criminal activities have become.
The whole "secret question" thing seemed to me to a completely stupid idea from the start. "Hey, give us password. If you forget your password, give us a much, much less secure way to access your account." I've always given false info to those, when I bother to fill them out at all. If necessary, I just store this false info along with the password in the encrypted file I keep my passwords in. The security questions…
When I signed up for a new bank account the bank rep had me set up online banking on their computer. When she asked me for my security questions and answers she was baffled when I told her the question selected didn't matter, and the answer was a seemingly random alphanumeric string. I told her that I don't know her, or her machine. For now, I'll be setting it as quick, easy for me to remember, string and I'll change…
Not even free text but only allowing a limited set of answers via dropdown menus (most of the provided answers don't apply to me either, so it's both insecure for them and hard for me to remember as well)
I give arbitrary answers that would make sense to something like an AI. Like, "Q: Who was your father's first employer? A: Avocado flesh" or "Q: What is your mother's maiden name? A: Rutherford B. Hayes"
Of course, all such answers are stored in my password manager.
The whole "secret question" thing seemed to me to a completely stupid idea from the start. "Hey, give us password. If you forget your password, give us a much, much less secure way to access your account." I've always given false info to those, when I bother to fill them out at all. If necessary, I just store this false info along with the password in the encrypted file I keep my passwords in. The security questions…
I do the same. Once, a bank asked me over the phone what my high school mascot was (or whatever) to verify that I was really me. I hadn't expected them to use the question in this way, so I wasn't prepared to look up my answer. Knowing whatever randomly generated string I'd used was likely unpronounceable I answered, "I could teach you to pronounce it, but first you'd need to cut out your tongue." which they accepted…