I’m thinking about how much the world has changed in the past 30 or so years….

When I was a young 18-year-old trying to get any job in a computer room, I had the most horrible resume on the planet. I’m now a grey beard but when I wrote this resume, there was no web to help me figure this out. It was printed on a dot matrix printer, you could see that it was spindle fed, fan folded paper from the perforation marks on the sides, top and bottom of the page. I typed it in a text editor, centered and aligned things manually. The resume listed high school projects and fast-food experience. You could tell that I put effort into the document, but I lacked the experience and tools to do one properly. The resume had a hobbies section to pad out the page which contained “Fencing (with sabres, not stolen objects)”. This one line tickled the hiring manager so much that he brought me in for the interview and I landed a job taking print outs off of printers.

Fast forward 30 or so years, and today I find myself working on a video resume. Because we live in Covid times I haven’t seen my barber in months, so I’ve decided that I’ve voicing over a powerpoint presentation instead of appearing directly on camera. Considering my voice over and video editing abilities, I suspect this video resume with have the video equivalent of perforation marks and I think I may be fine with that. Because the one thing I’ve learned in this life is when you try new things it’s rarely perfect the first time.

So 6 years ago, I wrote this little diddy on how to handle password reset (Security) questions. This still applies today. The trick is to lie consistently.

In light of the iCloud exploit I've been thinking a lot about secret questions for password retrieval. I've never liked secret questions as a way to retrieve / reset passwords. Anyone who's known me a while can answer them. If you're a public figure the answers to your secret questions can often be found on your wikipedia page or your latest teen beat interview. You might be saying, "Yo wise guy, you have to answer the questions"... yes but you don't have to do it honestly, you just have to lie consistently. Google isn't checking against a database where you went to School, they just make sure you answer the same way when you set it up and when you are requesting a reset.

Without giving away more information, I've always used a different person's bio when answering secret questions. For Example:

1) Name of Street You Grew up on: Privet Drive

2) Mother's Maiden Name: Evans

3) Name of your Best Friend: Ron Weasley

4) School: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

5) Favorite Sport: Quidditch

6) Make / Model of Car: Buckbeak

... etc, etc

The person can be fictional or a real person. Before you try, the person I chose is not someone from sci-fi / fantasy fiction. We all have the biographical data about someone else in our heads whether it's a character out of a book, an actor, a sports figure or a politician. Odds are you'd be safer then using your own data.