Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

The current top trending topic on Twitter is the “pornnamesgame.”  It seems silly and harmless enough.  You take the name of your first pet and add the name of the street you grew up on or your mother’s maiden name and the resulting name is your “porn name.”  For example if your first pet’s name was Spunky and you grew up on Wisteria Lane your “porn name” would be Spunky Wisteria Lane.  Funny, right?  Actually it’s a phisher’s dream.  How so?  Think about it.

Have an online banking account?  Pay your credit card bill on the issuer’s website?  Have an eBay account?  Paypal?  Or even just a simple email account?  Chances are when you signed up for any of those accounts you were asked to create at least one “security question.”  These questions are presented when you forget your password and/or just want to change it or other account info.  The sites usually provide questions for you to answer-and what are the most common ones?

“What is the name of your first pet?”

“What is your mother’s maiden name?”

“What is the name of the street you grew up on?”

Yep, that’s right.  That silly, harmless sounding game actually tricks people into revealing the answers to several common security questions - and since email addresses are usually quite easy to find, a phisher has everything they need to compromise someone’s accounts.  They could take over your email account to send spam, use your eBay account to put up fake auctions and rip people off, or worse.

Yet people are freely posting this info in their tweets, thinking they are playing a harmless game.  If you’ve done so, change your passwords and all your security questions ASAP!

Read[PCWorld]