The Stochastic Game

AgileBits has just released 1Password for Linux in beta, which is super nice! Up until now I had to use the web version, or the 1Password extension in Firefox, when I was on my Linux laptop. To celebrate this, I’m going to share my favourite 1Password trick, which AgileBits incidentally kinda-blogged about not too long ago.

One of the weakest spots in your personal security are the so-called “security questions” that websites force you to enter, and from which somebody can social-engineer their way through your account. Password managers let you store, well, passwords, but you can really store anything you want in there, so why not store stupid answers to those questions? Instead of writing a “real” answer, you can just generate a password, put it in the answer field, and store it in your password manager for later! Simple but effective.

I generally use the word generator in 1Password, instead of the random character string, because there’s a chance you have to speak that answer aloud to some phone operator in the future… “My mother’s maiden name? Why, yes, it’s ‘correct horse battery staple’, sir, thank you”.

I hope it helps!