On: Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

[dmnd]

To respond to one of the article's examples, maiden names and family relationships simply should not be used for security purposes.

Making this information public by default will be very beneficial for genealogical purposes. Why prevent this in favour of perpetuating broken security questions?

[nathanhammond → dmnd]

Agreed. The real issue is with sites posing a "security" question that is researchable. However, this is still a very common problem. I've taken to giving a password when somebody asks for my mother's maiden name.

I'm in favor of genealogical research, but by my estimation that isn't nearly as difficult these days and Facebook probably poses no obstacle nor discernible benefit. I was simply pointing out a possible vector of exploiting the information and that was the first one that came to mind.