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Comment by TimTheTinker | Hacker News Reader

I just generate more passwords for the security questions. Since I’m using a reliable, backed-up password manager, my primary concern is protecting my account from would-be hijackers, not resetting a potentially lost password.

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Yes, because there is no way I'm answering what city I was married in. It is public record. A password-like "nonsense" answer is the only way to go.

The one thing I try to do is make sure whatever password generator I use for these produces pronounceable passwords in English that are relatively easy to spell, because so many of the places that want these really mean "Phone password".

1Password integrates with the iPhone's built-in password manager, so I'm never stuck typing in passwords anymore.

The issue isn't typing them. The issue is that many "Security Questions" are secretly "Phone Passwords" because customer service representatives can see them in plaintext and will ask you them if you ever have reason to call them over the phone. Making sure that they are pronounceable (mostly) English words avoids some of the potential awkwardness of reading them out of your password manager over the phone, even if they are intentional random gibberish. It also partly avoids the social engineering trap of "it's just random garbage" because at least if it looks like words a customer service rep may still ask for them anyway rather than not bother to one-at-a-time review a series of random characters.

Ok, gotcha. 1Password can also generate passphrases from dictionary words.

Agreed, the “it’s a bunch of gobbledygook” social engineering hack is a really serious vulnerability.

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