Mothers’ maiden name – Your secret password
David Weinberger wrote about The most secret word ever, your mothers maiden name!
So what’s the 2nd most secret thing?
Date of Birth
Here in Australia, Mothers maiden name and Date of Birth are probably the two key things used as security questions when you call up an institution. As David said, it’s scary how a nasty family member, or anyone with access to your account details at an institution may have access to that.
At least now some of the banks ask you to create a question and answer it.
Anyway .. for a scary tale, a colleague of mine recently lost his passport in a US hotel. He did not realise until he was at the airport. You’d think it would a problem, but no, the airline rang the embassy in Oz, and guess what that security question was to let him on the flight and back into Australia ??
Yup .. you guessed it “What’s your mothers maiden name?”