Hacker News Reader

Comment by ymse | Hacker News Reader

I can't reply to the sister comment for some reason, so I'll piggyback on the parent.

I always fill these with awkward or absurd questions/anwers that would be amusing if a human operator ever needs to verify them. E.g.

Would you like to go on a date with me?

What color pants am I wearing?

What is the square root of insanity?

Obviously you need to store these in a password database in order to remember them, which kind of defeats the purpose. If I have to choose from predefined questions, it goes along these lines.

Q: What was your mothers maiden name?

A: Why, are you stalking her?

Q: Where were you born?

A: Oh I can't remember, it's been so long!

View on HN

I've just started filling them with randomly generated strings that my password manager helpfully creates for me. Though, apparently my bank uses those answers for phone verification also, which makes answering questions like "What's your Significant Other's nickname?" awkward when the answer is "F9-#g7a2<qj"

I do the same, but Correct Horse Battery Staple them.

Yep, that's the way to do it - just ignore the questions competely and let your password manager handle it.

Use a random but user friendly value

#$%&+@ is going to be hard to type or speak, just say their nickname is "the frozen one", same entropy, easier to handle

>> What's your Significant Other's nickname?

> Use a random but user friendly value

> "the frozen one"

I imagine that may make make your significant other who was previously friendly, markedly less so, if they see your "friendly value". But that may have been your point, as it may be quite a bit easier to remember. :)

My point is to use a term that is easier to type and speak rather than just a sequence of symbols. Or just modify the "right" answer in a quirky way.

But yeah, what you said might happen.

Error: Security question answer cannot contain special characters: !@#$%^&*()';

Error: Security question answer cannot be more than 10 characters long.

Error: Security question answer must be one word.

Error: Security question answer must be unique.

Error: Security question error. Please try again.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com