That’s like using the same password everywhere (not a great idea).
I hate these questions - it’s almost as though they were designed to enable identity theft by social engineering.
I’m one with multiple answers for many questions.
First Car - VW Bug? Beetle? Bug?
First Pet - First family dog? Holly. My first dog - Sarah, but she had distemper when we got her, and died in a couple weeks - Siddhartha - My first all-my-own dog at 12 years old. My first cat? Simon. My first horse?
Maternal Grandmother’s first name - it’s a weird one, and I’m not sure how it was spelled.
I hate them.
StG
So, y’all just don’t have security words? I have five words that I use, in order, regardless of question. The five make a sentence like:
Name of first pet: Responsible
Dads Middle Name: People
Fave Food: Discover
Moms middle name: Workarounds
Fave Dinosaur: Daily
… I mean, its not like they check your answers for accuracy! 
While I feel vaguely wrong about it, I make things up since the answer doesn’t have to be true.
Your favorite food when you were a child? Glue
Your favorite elementary school teacher? Kotter
Honeymoon location? Paris
I would also like to mention that I use LastPass religiously and place all my security sentences in my site’s history. This helps too.
What if they give you the questions in a different order the second time? How do you know which answer went with which question?
-
Using the same answer to each question is something the idjits who think of these things know people do so they are generally banned. Weird how they can think of extra stuff like this but not the basics.
-
Having the answers form an order (either via numbers or a sequence in a sentence) often doesn’t help since you are tested by their algorithm picking a question at random. “Let’s see, was “favorite teacher” the 1st or 4th one on the list?”
Like I said, LastPass.
Yeah, have had that before. I solve it using Lastpass, it can also be solved by having default answers for those common questions or by integrating keywords from the question into your default password. (Like for Dads middle name use Middleton or something).
I like my “sentence” method because, even if I do have to guess, I got a 1 in 3 or 4 chance of getting it right on the first try, even if the question is randomly selected. The only time this is a problem is when you have to use numbers/special characters (requiring me to deviate from my sentence), but then… Lastpass.
I agree these questions are frustrating. My solution, if you can’t get in, is to cancel the account (or abandon it if you can’t cancel). Start a new one. Any continuity lost is their problem, not mine.
In the case of a bank or securities account, they are all too anxious to reset the account if you can’t access it. Hope your only access is not by internet.
I went to recover a password once and got the following messages:
“To recover your password, please answer the following security question:”
“For security reasons, your security question has been left blank.”
:smack:
Security question answers should be treated as additional passwords. Write them down somewhere secure. And preferably, don’t use real answers, especially if it’s something other people can guess or look up easily. E.g. if your Facebook profile picture shows you on a bike, don’t answer “What’s your favorite sport?” with “Cycling.” Just make up an answer and write it down.
My favourite silly one is Facebook’s (old?) thing where as a security thing, they ask you to ID your friends from pics they’re tagged in. At one point while on holiday a few years ago, I needed to send a message to a friend I didn’t have a phone number for, somewhat urgently. Tried to log in to Facebook on an internet cafe computer, couldn’t remember my password.
I was then with, and expected to identify friends from, one blurry picture of fire, a silhouette of an ambiguous hippy, a road sign and a pair of shoes.
Yes - on Oak Island.
Dennis
Guys, guys! The answers don’t have to be true, or even meaningful. They just have to be memorable (to you).
Pick a boldly meaningless word that you won’t forget - “rectitude”, say - and nominate it as your answer to any security question. It’s probably at least as secure as the truthful answer, since there are probably a good number of people in the world who know, or can find out, your mother’s actual maiden name.
I hate security questions overall, they’re horrible, and they’re a horrible idea, too. Many of them are questions that anyone who knows you well could answer. Many others are questions that could be answered by doing some research on you, especially in this age of google where more and more information about someone becomes available. Street where you grew up? Well, correlate age with age of parents, see where parents were living at the right age, and if like many people, they didn’t move around much, bingo. For a lot of people, the answer to this is still the same street their parents currently live on. What’s worse, the damn things act almost as a master password on many sites, because in many cases that’s all you need in order to reset the password/email/everything.
But I have a special loathing for ‘favorite’ questions. Because I don’t really have much of a concept of ‘favorite’ things. I can probably distill things down to a short list, but a single ‘favorite’ in any category is almost impossible. Favorite artist, favorite song, favorite food, favorite color, and so on. None of those have a single answer for me. Because I can never really think to myself a single one of those things that stands far above all others in my preference. Generally there’s a short cluster of them right at the top, and my mood determines which of my favorites is my current favorite at that moment.
The few places I’ve seen that actually allow me to pick my own security question? Those I like. Because I can write a question that I know I will always answer in the same way (or at the very least, one of two ways) and yet which is utterly meaningless to anyone who’s not me, since I don’t believe anyone in the world knows me well enough to figure out the answer that I would give.
I’ve mostly been using my password manager to store the information in the notes section, and I think I’m going to start having it generate random answers, too. I hadn’t really thought of that before for some reason, but I really should just treat them like ‘extra passwords’.
Good ideas here, I was born in Washington DC and half the time it won’t recognize that when I’m asked in what state was I born.
As noted, most places reject giving the same answer to each security question. (In fact I’ve never run across one that did allow this.)
Oh, those are fun. Sometimes, they’re also unhappy reminders of missed or lost milestones.
“The middle name of your sister-in-law.”
I’m an only child & so was my husband. Fuck anyone who legally cannot get married or is unhappily single.
“Your child’s [favorite color etc.]”
I don’t have kids. Fuck anyone who wants kids & can’t have 'em.
“The street you grew up on.”
We moved 5 times before I was age ten, I didn’t really “grow up” anywhere specific. Fuck all those Army brats, and anyone whose parents had relocation-heavy jobs.
“Your first car.”
Fuck everybody who can’t afford one yet, or lives in dense urban areas with no need for a personal vehicle, or whose family shares a communal car.
“Your father’s middle name.”
Mine has none, just 1st and last. Fuck anyone who doesn’t know who their father is.
“The name of your childhood dog.”
What if we had 3? What if someone’s deathly allergic so the family never had one?
Just as a “Me too”, I ran into this last night. “First place of employment”, imagine a name like Tommy’s Chicken & Fish.
Tommy’s Chicken & Fish?
Tommy’s Chicken?
Tommy’s?
I got it wrong and, luckily, the next question was good ole “Father’s middle name”. [Edit: with apologizes to purplehorseshoe!]