Maintaining Privacy Means Obfuscating Online Security Answers

Why does your neighbor next door list his home as Nairobi, Kenya? You know he not only does not live there and probably could not even locate it on a map. It is what is known as social media obfuscation. Some may call it a lie — others refer to it as privacy protection. In the world of big data, the more obscure your identity, the harder you are to track. Right now, the best thing to do is to throw them off the trail. I have been doing this for years. It is a way to tell who is selling your information because you only use the answers one time on a single site. When you start receiving advertising or solicitations utilizing that information, you know which website has been selling your data for personal gain. Use unique passwords for every site and never answer the security questions with accurate information. Use a password manager to manage all your passwords, security question answers, and pins. How does a hacker recover a password? If you use accurate information, the answer is drum roll…GOOGLE! Precise information is just a quick search away. Your answers to security questions can be found online via, facebook, Linkedin, colleges, business profiles, etc. By obfuscating this information, you can make it much harder for a hacker to reset passwords for access to your accounts.