Source: How-To Geek
A birthday isn’t something you might think of as being private information you should keep secret. Almost everyone celebrates them on social media, and quite a few people post them on their profile. That’s a horrible idea; here’s why.
It’s Probably One of Your Security Questions
Alongside the model of your first car and your mother’s maiden name, your birthday is perhaps the most common security question asked on most websites.
Security questions are notoriously awful. They’re likely the cause of most social media “hacks” online, including the 2014 iCloud breach that affected many celebrities. The fault is in password recovery systems; they’re designed for you to be able to reset your password easily, but they often make it easy for hackers to do the same. Brute-forcing your password on a website isn’t really a thing anymore, and most “hacks” you may experience either rely on you being caught in massive data breaches or having terrible security questions.
Like your birthday. It’s a wonder that it’s even still an option for the already insecure “security question protection,” since it’s much easier for a hacker to find out your birthday than “the street you grew up on.” Since it’s also one of the simplest and easy to remember questions, it’s probably picked very often. That’s an issue because many people leave it publicly posted on their profile, or at least leave up a list of “Happy Birthday!” posts every year. In fact, people give away a lot of answers to security questions in the form of “quizzes”…
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