A Real Problem You Should Fix. Now.

2009-04-12T14:36:49-07:00

I’ve mentioned secret questions on my site before, but I never quite realized how much of a problem they are until today, when I discovered [uspublicrecords.com][1].

It’s a simple site. You put in a name, and if it has that person in its database, it gives you their age, middle name, and family members. So far, I haven’t found any names it doesn’t have.

Using this information, I went and checked a friend’s Gmail secret question, which was, “What is your father’s middle name?” I just happened to have that information from uspublicrecords.com, so I put it in, and changed their email password.¹

It’s pretty creepy how easy this is, and fixing this problem could take days as you check all your secret questions one by one. This might make a good mashup: a system for checking all your secret questions.

Anyway, now might be a good time to go change your secret questions, cause if it has anything to do with middle names, that site will hand them right out.

With their OK, of course. [1]: http://uspublicrecords.com ↩

Michael Jay Lissner

A Real Problem You Should Fix. Now.