1993-11-02 - Your mother’s maiden name

Header Data

From: hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 5a6b27920c78557bfe5a847f48e364b450a0ddd759d20a97d62d4df93604acd4
Message ID: <9311020923.AA01212@ah.com>
Reply To: <Pine.3.87.9311011635.A18061-0100000@crl.crl.com>
UTC Datetime: 1993-11-02 09:31:20 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 01:31:20 PST

Raw message

From: hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 01:31:20 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Your mother's maiden name
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.87.9311011635.A18061-0100000@crl.crl.com>
Message-ID: <9311020923.AA01212@ah.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


re: cost of obtaining mother's maiden name.

>And how secure is "mom's maiden name" as a password for obtaining
>sensitive information over the phone?

Not very.  Birth records and marriage records tend to be public
record.  Organizations that do genealogical research tend to have this
data around, although they don't always make it easy to get data on
the living.

On the other hand, most organizations I've dealt with that use it just
use it as a password field.  You can just pretend that the person on
the other end of the line is asking "What is your password?" rather
than the standard question.

Eric

Thread

• Return to November 1993

• Return to “Arthur Chandler <arthurc@crl.com>”
• Return to “dmandl@lehman.com (David Mandl)”
• Return to “hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)”
• Return to “J. Michael Diehl <mdiehl@triton.unm.edu>”
• Return to “Matthew J Ghio <mg5n+@andrew.cmu.edu>”

• Return to “Steven Hodas <hhll@u.washington.edu>”

• 1993-11-01 (Mon, 1 Nov 93 13:19:49 PST) - Re: Anonymous vs false IDs - dmandl@lehman.com (David Mandl)
  • 1993-11-01 (Mon, 1 Nov 93 14:14:51 PST) - Re: Anonymous vs false IDs - Matthew J Ghio <mg5n+@andrew.cmu.edu>
    • 1993-11-02 (Mon, 1 Nov 93 16:22:40 PST) - Your mother’s maiden name - Arthur Chandler <arthurc@crl.com>
      • 1993-11-02 (Mon, 1 Nov 93 18:33:50 PST) - Re: Your mother’s maiden name - Steven Hodas <hhll@u.washington.edu>
      • 1993-11-02 (Mon, 1 Nov 93 20:34:50 PST) - Re: Your mother’s maiden name - J. Michael Diehl <mdiehl@triton.unm.edu>
      • 1993-11-02 (Tue, 2 Nov 93 01:31:20 PST) - Your mother’s maiden name - hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)