‘Porn Name’ game part of devious plot to steal your money and identity
Porn star name game might unlock your secret questions
During oh-so-high-minded conversations in college about Heidegger’s philosophy of art, Faulkner’s narrators, and the ethos of social class, my friends and I might take a little brain break… and play the porn star name game. “What would your porn name be?” we would ask each other. There are several different formulas. This is the one I like best:
A person’s Porn Name is calculated using the below formula:
(First Pet) + (Name of Street You Grew Up On) = Porn Name
Stephen Colbert’s Porn Name is Caesar Honeybee. .
Another variation involves combining your pet’s name with your mother’s maiden name. If Stephen Colbert were to dance on a stripper’s pole, he’d be doing it as Caesar Honeybee. LOL, right?
I may have a good byline, but I have a rocking porn star name. While I shared it with my college friends, I’m not going to share it here, or on Facebook, or on Twitter. The online security company Sophos points out that your mother’s maiden name, your first pet, and your first street are the answers often sought out by banks and financial companies for “secret questions” that keep your data secure.
So, a hacker could grab details like your pet’s name to try and crack into your email account. Think that’s unlikely? Well, the likes of Sarah Palin, Paris Hilton and Salma Hayek have all had their private email accounts broken into by hackers after they guessed their so-called “secret answers”.
In addition, just think of how many people use the name of their beloved pet labradoodle as their password for umpteen online accounts anyway!
via Why you shouldn’t reveal your porn star name on Twitter | Graham Cluley’s blog.
The over 36,000 Facebook users that have downloaded the “What is your porn star name?” application apparently haven’t thought about this.
Microsoft Research suggests a way to let us continue to embrace our porn stardom, but not to imperil our bank and e-mail accounts, after the jump.
Acquaintances of 32 webmail users – people with whom they would not normally share their login details – were asked to try and guess the answers users assigned to protect their accounts. The volunteers managed to guess correctly nearly a fifth of the time, raising questions over how secure the commonly used system is.
However, a second Microsoft study suggests a more secure alternative: relying on trusted friends to vouch for you if an account becomes locked…
Under the new system proposed by Stuart Schechter and Rob Reeder at Microsoft, users select several “trustees”. If a user becomes locked out of their account their trustees receive a message asking them to download a “recovery code.” The user must collect codes from multiple trustees to unlock their account.
via ‘Secret’ questions leave accounts vulnerable – New Scientist. (Hattip: Thanks, Katie!)
Secure, but a wee bit complicated.
Given the frequency with which I forget my passwords, I would need trustees who possess the kind of patience needed to wade through Being and Time and Absalom Absalom. Thank goodness for those college friends.
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Tough Campbell. Beat that with a stick.
This is strange, my first dog was named Mister and I grew up President Ave.
Kashmir,
The last part is a problem for me. I live alone and my kitten, Valerie, may jump up on my desk, but she’s not going to figure out my password. When you live alone, you sometimes do things differently. I and am not interested in having seven screen names. I have my Master Screen Name and a second one as I was having problems with this site and created a second screen name and a second account on there. I don’t know the password to either.
My porn name would be worse than my real name. I would be Mimi Valley View; not sexy. I have only been asked my Mother’s Maiden Name for my bank accounts, the IRS and Social Security. It would be a great porn first name, but I won’t reveal it here. (You wouldn’t believe how sexy it would be.) I have problems with companies I have dealt with for years because my legal first name is Sandy. It is not short for anything. When I slept with a girl at college I realized I was gay during sex…what an epiphany? So, I got to have a wonderful idyllic childhood and there was no closet. I could never understand why my identical twin brother hated me so much. He knew he was gay. So, I got be sexy, masculine, myself all because I just assumed I was straight. I was a bartender in gay bars and I was approached and did five films and two magazines in a three-year span.
Well, there, I am back on track. I used my last name as my first and it reminded me of a kid I had in my class First grade – Graduation. In Gladstone, Oregon (Outside Portland, OR) most of the 120 people I graduated with had gone to school together all 12 years…13 years for those that went to Kindergarten. We had the smallest graduating class by far. So, I ripped off this guy’s name. I became Clark Webster for my brief porn career. Porn seems like a good idea, but you either wind up with a huge ego and a long way to fall or it’s just an experience and you move on. I like to pick who screws me and having a Casting Director do, did not work for. We had very different ideas what a hot top was. They just keep offering more money each time to make it hard to say no, but I was a bartender. I made more money than he did already. I wish I had been materialistic or at least bought a house with the money from bartending. But, I can’t wish to be materialistic anymore than someone that is a tightwad can wish being generous. We just sort of wind up being these wonderful human beings, all here for different reasons.
Sandy
[...] I’ve written before about the hazards of weak passwords. See: ‘Porn Name’ game part of devious plot to steal your money and identity. [...]