I usually give a different email address to each service that I sign up to, so I can tell if they are selling my address, but I never thought of giving a different mother's maiden name so I can detect phishing. It's a reasonable strategy, but I have trouble remembering the name of my elementary school, my favorite color (I dont care), the make of my first car (my parent's or the one I actually paid for) ... However, I will trythe strategy of giving a couple of wrong answers to weed out the fakes.