4 ms·

Many of those questions are used as 2FA as well.

by ogn3rd 5y ago

Johnny555 5y ago
Those I understand, but I'm wondering about the "What's your perfect fall day" or "How old were you when you got your first job" questions that don't seem like they'd yield answers to security questions.
- rubicon33 5y ago
  Those are thrown in there to make the general asking of these types of questions considered normal.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    Magician calls that mis-direction.
- MikeTheGreat 5y ago
  "What's your perfect fall day" does not strike me as a good security question "How old were you when you got your first job" actually does seem like a good security question for many people. You're unlikely to forget it, after a while not many other people will know it, and it's a single number (whole number, most likely) so it's easy for a computer to parse (and hard for you to mess up by leaving out / adding too much detail). Depending on what you respond to on social media, and depending on if you've got any accounts that use this as a security question, you might want to go back and force the account to use a new question ;)
  - NineStarPoint 5y ago
    The main issue I see with the “age of first job” question is that there aren’t actually statistically that many likely answers to the question, especially if you have basic information on a person. Compare to make and model of first car, which has a lot of possible options and only slightly correlates to life situation.
    - edoceo 5y ago
      Make and Model of cars are used on credit verification in USA - like historical address, it's likely linked to some previous credit activity.
    - mikey_p 5y ago
      The author implies, but doesn't make explicit that they think things like "age when you got your first job" are more about inferring socioeconomic indicators about the individual than fishing for password clues. And honestly I bet age of first job probably is a decent indicator of certain economic factors.
- mooxie 5y ago
  Well the article notes that some amount of user demographic info is revealed simply by interacting with the post, regardless of the information provided by the respondent. Secondly, this is almost like the email phishing paradox: to an educated user it seems like the number of people who respond with relevant information would be extremely low, but if the attempt costs you basically nothing and you get something useful 1% of the time, you're still winning. "My perfect fall day is my memory of Aunt June when we lived in Connecticut in the 70s, before she passed away." In itself something like that doesn't seem useful, but there's a good amount of information in there if someone can correlate it with other details about your life.
- mikey_p 5y ago
  It's not about security questions, the implication that the author doesn't make explicit is that "how old were you when you got your first job" probably says more about your economic well being and possibly your political leanings.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  According to the article, anything related to your age or where you live is a pretty good indicator of what your voting preferences are. The article cites "90% accuracy" if your answers can be used to reasonably guess those facts. Additionally, if your profile is public (the default still, I believe) is made available when you comment, I'd guess there'd be follow-up scraping going on to collect more details that are then used in conjunction with whatever your response was.
- Pokepokalypse 5y ago
  I tend to think these are reactions to some of the "warnings" memes that are passed around lately (as-in: "don't answer these memes because they're collecting security question info") . . . the goal of these affiliate postings is not to gather security question info. It may not even be a cambridge-analytica-type of data-collection for a "personality test". I think it's more of an effort to build affiliate pages in FB that are highly ranked (because they have such high engagement numbers) - - so that that ranking can be used LATER, to push ads. Probably political ads; ahead of the next midterms.

Many of those questions are used as 2FA as well.

by ogn3rd 5y ago

Many of those questions are used as 2FA as well.

Those I understand, but I'm wondering about the "What's your perfect fall day" or "How old were you when you got your first job" questions that don't seem like they'd yield answers to security questions.

rubicon33 5y ago
Those are thrown in there to make the general asking of these types of questions considered normal.
- edoceo 5y ago
  Magician calls that mis-direction.
MikeTheGreat 5y ago
"What's your perfect fall day" does not strike me as a good security question "How old were you when you got your first job" actually does seem like a good security question for many people. You're unlikely to forget it, after a while not many other people will know it, and it's a single number (whole number, most likely) so it's easy for a computer to parse (and hard for you to mess up by leaving out / adding too much detail). Depending on what you respond to on social media, and depending on if you've got any accounts that use this as a security question, you might want to go back and force the account to use a new question ;)
- NineStarPoint 5y ago
  The main issue I see with the “age of first job” question is that there aren’t actually statistically that many likely answers to the question, especially if you have basic information on a person. Compare to make and model of first car, which has a lot of possible options and only slightly correlates to life situation.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    Make and Model of cars are used on credit verification in USA - like historical address, it's likely linked to some previous credit activity.
  - mikey_p 5y ago
    The author implies, but doesn't make explicit that they think things like "age when you got your first job" are more about inferring socioeconomic indicators about the individual than fishing for password clues. And honestly I bet age of first job probably is a decent indicator of certain economic factors.
mooxie 5y ago
Well the article notes that some amount of user demographic info is revealed simply by interacting with the post, regardless of the information provided by the respondent. Secondly, this is almost like the email phishing paradox: to an educated user it seems like the number of people who respond with relevant information would be extremely low, but if the attempt costs you basically nothing and you get something useful 1% of the time, you're still winning. "My perfect fall day is my memory of Aunt June when we lived in Connecticut in the 70s, before she passed away." In itself something like that doesn't seem useful, but there's a good amount of information in there if someone can correlate it with other details about your life.
mikey_p 5y ago
It's not about security questions, the implication that the author doesn't make explicit is that "how old were you when you got your first job" probably says more about your economic well being and possibly your political leanings.
TameAntelope 5y ago
According to the article, anything related to your age or where you live is a pretty good indicator of what your voting preferences are. The article cites "90% accuracy" if your answers can be used to reasonably guess those facts. Additionally, if your profile is public (the default still, I believe) is made available when you comment, I'd guess there'd be follow-up scraping going on to collect more details that are then used in conjunction with whatever your response was.
Pokepokalypse 5y ago
I tend to think these are reactions to some of the "warnings" memes that are passed around lately (as-in: "don't answer these memes because they're collecting security question info") . . . the goal of these affiliate postings is not to gather security question info. It may not even be a cambridge-analytica-type of data-collection for a "personality test". I think it's more of an effort to build affiliate pages in FB that are highly ranked (because they have such high engagement numbers) - - so that that ranking can be used LATER, to push ads. Probably political ads; ahead of the next midterms.