Proton blog: Are security questions terrible for account security?
Proton blog: Are security questions terrible for account security?
Explore the pitfalls of security questions and discover stronger alternatives to safeguard your online privacy.
The answer is yes, and the TL;DR is not to use them, use 2FA, and not share personal details online (which is hopefully all obvious advice)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12060980
When I'm asked for a security question, I let my password manager generate gibberish and use those as answers.
I can't honestly think of a less secure way to "secure" an account, than being asked questions that anyone you know would be able to answer with little effort.
20no they are not, just another stupid article from proton. nothing stops you from saying that bwE0FpHb5iPzMZiismyeiTIWhoB*#V8SaD0F3R*SeH was your first pets name.
proton however stops you from disabling otp after setting up multiple security keys, they stop you from putting a pin on your drive app and they stop you from using an +4 digit pin on your mail app.
but yea, the potentially insecure thing they dont even offer is the biggest concernn here 🤦♀️
16Nothing stops us enthusiasts from doing that, this article is for a more casual user who might not realise how easy the real answers are for a hacker to discover
37no they are not, just another stupid article from proton. nothing stops you from saying that bwE0FpHb5iPzMZiismyeiTIWhoB*#V8SaD0F3R*SeH was your first pets name.
And how many regular people do that? Or does security apply only to advanced users?
12Security is always porous. The article really had no suggestions. They say 2FA but account recovery is often a combination of access to your email account or questions. None of this stuff is particularly secure.
So yes security is an advanced feature usually not provided and normal users do not even try at being secure nor do most systems insist on it.
Edit: Some sites are doing away with passwords and just sending and email with a link to login. Totally not secure but account recovery has long used the same method so it may not be actually reducing security much since there never was much security.
5I'm probably not a regular user but my first pet's name, the city I was born in, my first school and my childhood nicknames are also very long strings of characters 👌
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nothing stops you from saying that bwE0FpHb5iPzMZiismyeiTIWhoB*#V8SaD0F3R*SeH was your first pets name.
How will you remember that though? A lot of password managers don't make it easy to store security question responses alongside account credentials, and if you're using a security question, it might be because you lost access to those credentials anyway
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Once, I made an account for something that let me write my own security question and answer. I thought that was much better than the usual options and wrote something that cryptically referenced a difficult problem I once worked on. The answer could possibly be found online, but only to someone who properly understood the question. Later, when I needed to authenticate myself again, I got my security question. The answer isn't something you typically memorize, but I knew what the prompt meant and how to work it out so I did so.
But I was too slow. Apparently you had to answer within one minute. It took me about ten so it locked me out. Tech support helpfully reset my password after merely verifying my phone number and SSN which are probably known to thousands.
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