The latest Facebook meme is being taken over by hackers

By now you'll probably have seen and dismissed the latest inane viral timewasting nonsense Facebook meme.

You know the one - "Ooh, I'm going to post details of 10 concerts I attended, except I actually didn't attend one of them, and you have to figure out which one I didn't attend, and here's a trite banality about the first concert I did attend."

That sort of thing.

Well it turns out that participating in and sharing this little vignette might cost you more than your social media dignity.

It turns out, this could be valuable information to hackers (and, we stress, absolutely nobody else).

Common security questions, such as your childhood best friend or your first musical instrument, can also ask details of first or favourite concerts.

According to Fatemeh Khatibloo, a Forrester Research analyst quoted by Jefferson Graham for USA Today:

If I'm a hacker, I'm taking full advantage of this.

Don't make those kinds of answers about your life public.

Tom Gorup, director of security operations for Rook Security (Indianapolis), typically advises people not to answer these kinds of questions. "It's not worth it," he explains.

There are other flaws in security questions: for example, it's possible find out someone's mother's maiden name online.

Therefore, Emmanuel Schalit (CEO of Dashline, a popular and secure password manager) advises generating a password of numbers, letters and symbols that cannot be guessed.

Slightly paranoid, perhaps, but all in all it's good online practice to keep your passwords obscure, and your private life private.

It's also good social media practice to remind yourself that nobody cares about the fictional concerts you didn't go to.

HT: USA Today

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