A seemingly innocent quiz that has been sweeping social media could help scammers get their hands on your personal data, experts say.
"What's your royal wedding guest name?" the meme, which began circulating ahead of Saturday's royal wedding, asks.
One version reads as follows:
"In honor of the royal wedding, use your 'royal wedding guest name' this week. Start with either 'Lord' or 'Lady' – your first name is one of your grandparents' names. Your surname is the name of your first pet, then 'of' followed by the name of the street you grew up on."
So what's the problem? According to WXIX and HuffPost, sharing your "royal name" could reveal the answers to your security questions.
"If they're asking you what could be security-rated questions like 'What's your mother's maiden name?' – things that you would get asked that would allow you to perhaps reset a password, login to a system through some alternative approach – they could be taking that information and be attempting to hack into systems with that," Dave Hatter, WXIX's technology expert, told the TV station.
A computer security expert identified as Snow echoed the sentiment in a message to HuffPost, saying the answers "could be used to gain access to accounts (social media, banking, work email, etc) with potential for identity theft."
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