Avoid the mistakes made by the likes of Sarah Palin, Paris
Hilton and Salma Hayek.
Security company Sophos is warning users of Microbloggging site
Twitter not to tell people their
"porn star names" because they are risking giving away
passwords.
These names are usually created by mixing the name of your first
pet with the street where you grew up or your mother's maiden
name.
For example Tickles (the fish) Porter (the surname).
"Thousands of people are potentially making life easy for
identity thieves eager to mine information from the micro-blogging
website," said Sophos.
Web e-mail providers and other companies will ask questions like
"what was the name of your first pet?" as security questions when
users want to reset passwords.
"In the past, users have had their private e-mail accounts
compromised by hackers guessing their secret answers," said Graham
Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
He said the fact that computer users use the same passwords for
multiple services only heightens the risks.
"In the past, Sarah Palin, Paris Hilton and Salma Hayek have all
had their private e-mail accounts compromised by hackers guessing
their secret answers," said Cluley. "People who freely share
personal information online are leaving themselves open to these
kinds of attacks