The Name Game

Or is it social engineering?

There’s a current meme going around on facebook.. One of these note things, you do it, you tag your friends, they do it, etc etc.

This one bugs me slightly, because it asks for a fair bit of information.  Here’s a brief summary of the answers you give.

1. Your Full Name
2. Your Mother’s Middle Name.
3. Your Grandfather’s Name.
4. Your favourite: Colour, Animal, Drink, Ice cream flavour, Cookie
5. Place of Birth
6. Street where you live
7. Street you grew up on
8. Name of your Pet

I recognise some of those as secret question/answer pairs from a number of websites.   I’m really only kicking the tyres on this one, but what if someone designed these memes to gather data about people, including data about their past, place of birth, residential address, pet names, other stuff that’s commonly asked for sample questions on “Secret Question/Answer” credentials online.

I decided not to participate in this one unsurprisingly.  In fact, I recommend that everyone who has done the “Name Game” note looks closely at their note privacy settings, just to make sure they don’t mind everyone knowing this information about them.