When signing up for many online accounts, security questions are sometimes required. The questions are used to authenticate the user, recover or reset a password. However, due to the vast amounts of personal info available on social media and the internet, many of those questions can be easily guessed.
If a website requires security questions, don’t answer them truthfully. Instead, use something unique, random, and treat it like a strong password. Avoid common words or phrases, and the longer, the better. It would be best to use a random mix of uppercase, lowercase, numbers & special characters, or a passphrase, which is a sentence like a string of random words. If you have to answer more than one security question, you could use the same complicated answer for each question to make it easier to manage.
You should always limit the amount of personal information you post on Social Media.
Online Social Media quizzes should never be completed. Those seemingly harmless quizzes are sometimes apps designed to gain access to your personal information. In many cases, data mining doesn’t stop when you finish taking the quiz. Once an app or website has connected to your Facebook account, the developer can maintain that connection for months and continue to request information about your profile and posts.
What’s the harm in answering a few questions to prove how well you know a friend or fun facts about yourself? Some of the mixed questions are common security questions for Online Banking, credit cards, and other personal accounts.
Those questions that get shared by many of your friends may very well have originated by fraudsters wanting to steal identities, hack online banking accounts, or gather enough information to be able to impersonate unaware Facebook users.
Be mindful of social engineering. Social engineering happens when a malicious actor manipulates someone on the internet into providing confidential information. It usually occurs when they impersonate a friend or family member on social media. You should never accept friend requests from people you are already connected to or don’t know. It is wise to remove personal details from your profile like phone number or address.
Review your privacy settings and be strict about what info you share.