oh, oh... this could be dangerous

so a friend on a forum i belong to shared a link to an article about how easy it is for hackers to get into your accounts by mining for your information off of your blog and other publicly available information.

some of the biggest concerns are the password reset options sites have. if the question is what's your mother's maiden name or pet's name, those are more easily found than you'd think off of people's blogs. i know i mention oscar all the time. luckily though, lest any hackers are reading, i have never used him as an answer to a question. really. but mother's maiden names and birthplace cities all might be there easily found.

i have, over the last year, been changing my passwords to more challenging alpha-numeric symbol kinds of things. and, i do honestly hate some of those preference questions like what was your first car? i can never remember if i used the first one i got to drive or the first one i bought for myself. and a coworker tried to guess the answer to that question to use my account to get to a client's website once when i was on vacation and messed me up because he guessed wrong. he said, "everyone's first car was a chevrolet!" well, neither of mine were.

but i did read one person's comments asking why we even feel the need to be truthful in those answers? it's not like anyone is checking. i was thinking that could be a lot of fun. why couldn't i say that my first car was a Lamborghini and i was born in Milan?

oh, the possibilities. something to consider.

i'll end with a quick post accident status update: chiropractor says there's some minor ligament damage. it will heal, but i'll probably need some adjustments over the next couple of months to make sure it heals well. i've decided i'm invisible and am now paranoid driving into intersections. if anyone moves out of line, i'm not going in.