Your Mother’s Maiden Name? It’s not Yahoo…
500 Million accounts compromised by a well known Internet Search, Email, and Media Engine (Yahoo) has surely affected the security of all Internet users with an account that they kept with a provider that has stored several bits of information about persona’s and personal lives. This may include Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that can track you via address and geo-location. It’s interesting to know that now hackers can span and query such data and perform “credit stuffing”with common known usernames and passwords, but…
they can also use your personally “now known” information gleaned from security questions.Hmmm. That’s a real problem.
Let’s say for example someone got your information from Yahoo regarding your security questions. Such as:
- Your Mother’s Maiden Name
- Your Place of Birth
- Your Best Man (at your wedding)
- Your first pet
- Your first car
- Your Grandmothers Middle Name
- Your youngest child’s name
All of this information is now potentially exposed by the Yahoo breach.
The questions remain: where else are you using this same information to validate your credentials? How long has this information been kept and now who has it?
This goes back to cyber-security being the greatest threat to privacy and safety in our generation including the safety of you, your family, and your personal data including Protected Health Information (ePHI), which doesn’t change once your diagnosed. and financial information including records and habits that you deem private.
I recommend you establish an alternate persona on the Internet. Someone that only you can identify with, and no one else will compromise as you move forward in this ever-changing landscape. Stay Secure by being Obscure.
Let Whoa.com help you guard against data breaches the right way.
