Posts like this are popping up across my facebook feed and I want to say, I think you're all looking at this wrong.

Many people already know this information about you already. Friends from your school days who are no longer in your life, Ex-Lovers, that cousin of yours who's less then desirable. Some questions like High School Mascot can be derived from your resume. Others like Mother's maiden name are a matter of public record.

1) Passwords should be random eg &Rtbpb4WWS9G (not my password on any system) can't be guessed no matter how well you know me.

2) Don't use your personal information to answer security questions, no one is validating the information. You just need to know what the right answers are. You can use a fictional character and answer as them, (What street did you grow up on? "Baker Street", Who is your best friend "John Watson", etc.) Alternately, you can just respond with non-sense (Favorite Color: "Eighteen", Where did you go to Middle School: "The Piggly Wiggly". Etc.).

You just need to be consistant.

A friend was speculating about the target register outage being a fry run for a larger attack of more realtors. Here is my answer:

Anyone with the time, power and access to effect a nationwide shutdown of Target registers would be better off keeping it quiet and profiting off of the information they have access to. They wouldn't announce to the world they had control by shutting things down.

If there's a vulnerability you don't do a test run this large because it will get patched now and the fix that will get spread to kmart, walmart, etc.

It also occurs to me if the goal is to destabilize the economy you don't do this on June 15, you do it on Black Friday.