People on Facebook are doing this goofy—no, it’s worse than goofy, really!—activity where they each publish personal information next to the title “Lord” or “Lady” as the name that they might use to attend the royal wedding.
(As a side note, I’m pretty sick of hearing about this royal wedding, and as much as I love the concept of fantasy and dragons and King Arthur, I think that kings and queens are best left in the history books and don’t have a place in modern society at all. In fact, their very existence only contradicts the democracy that we hold dear, doesn’t it?)
This little trend—similar to the whole bra color, cartoon character, and other Facebook status activities that people have been engaging in for the past few years—calls for posting your grandparent’s name, your first pet’s name, and the name of the road where you grew up all after the whole silly “Lord” or “Lady” thing. In other words, it calls for you to post many of the personal terms used to set your password and privacy settings when you first join websites, making them available for everyone to see—and use.
And don’t get complacent thinking that because you’ve never been hacked that you never will, either. I had a very simple password for five years and it was recently hacked. A few months ago Google showed me where someone in another country (I oddly don’t remember where) logged into my account. Of course, I’ve since changed my passwords, but I know it happened because I figured that it would never happen to me since I’m careful. That said, it was a very simple password with no capitals, numbers, or any other characters, so of course it was easy to hack.
So firstly, don’t play this stupid game. Or, if you want to play it, make up new grandparent’s names, pet names, and street names. Come up with something super funny or creative. The more ironic the better, of course. Just don’t give out those personal details.
Next, why not change your passwords while you’re thinking about it? Refreshing them every so often can only be a good thing, I would think, and the more obscure, the better. Combine favorite childhood games with the food you hate most and a number you see when you open a book to a random page, or something. Just make it unique as possible—and don’t let yourself be an easy target like I did.