What is your mother s maiden name

What’s your mother’s maiden name? It’s none of your business

Should anyone still be asking this question – or using the phrase ‘maiden name’ at all?

In an age of marriage equality, the concept of ‘maiden name’ seems increasing outdated. Photograph: Alamy

In an age of marriage equality, the concept of ‘maiden name’ seems increasing outdated. Photograph: Alamy

A n interesting debate was launched on Twitter when @KenSmith asked whether it was about time we dropped “maiden name” for the gender-neutral “birth name”. The tweet said: “Maiden has a ghostly cargo of Victorian sexual anxiety.”

There was an overwhelming consensus that “maiden name” seems outdated at best and, for most people, sexist. A few comments:

“Name before which marriage? I’ve been married, widowed and married again, keeping my own name always.” (@Bentonbag)

“Archaic and inaccurate. I was most definitely not a ‘maiden’ when I married. Didn’t change my name either.” (@JemmaD)

“The anglophone obsession with ‘maiden name’ is a window to the origin of marriage: trade of women for goods.” (@thisisredundant)

“I’m always baffled when my bank asks me my mother’s maiden name. How presumptuous to assume she married or changed her name.” (@WilkinsonSamuel)

Other people questioned the concept of changing one’s name on marriage at all as outdated. These days the husband sometimes takes the wife’s last name, or they double-barrel it. And with marriage equality, there may be two husbands or two wives, rendering the concept of a “maiden name” even more old-fashioned.

My youngest son’s surname comprises my wife’s surname, followed by mine. If a bank ever asks his “mother’s maiden name”, it will be the first half of his own surname. Which doesn’t sound a very secure security question to me.

Not everyone was comfortable with “birth name”. Alternative suggestions included “childhood name”, “native name”, “née”, and “original name” or “previous name” which, as @JonathanWest pointed out, “covers all cases of name change, not just to marriage and not just to birth name”.

Among the few dissenting voices were those concerned that this attack on “maiden name” was a threat to maiden over and maiden century (in cricket), along with maiden voyage and similar figurative uses. I can’t see any reason why.

I agree that “maiden name” is dated and sexist. I hope we can avoid it in the Guardian. Wikipedia favours the style “Jane Smith (born Jane Jones)” and this, when relevant, seems fair enough.

It’s sexist to ask a woman (but not a man) her maiden name, or to ask anyone for their mother’s maiden name. It’s none of their business, just its none of their business to know whether a woman is married (“Mrs”) or not (“Miss”) unless she chooses to tell them.

“Maiden name” does not take account of equal marriage – a male couple don’t have “maiden names”, a female couple have two, which are probably the names they actually use, so the whole thing becomes as dated as “spinster” or “bachelor girl” – or for that matter “confirmed bachelor” – now sound.

It may be a while before we all agree on an alternative, if we ever do, but it seems likely that the phrase “maiden name” is on the way out. And about time too.

Why is Mother’s Maiden Name still used as a security question?

From time to time, some web sites asks to enter a security question and an answer for it. The question list is standard and it usually includes «What is your mother’s maiden name?».

Some people use their mother’s real maiden name so that they are sure they can remember what to provide when asked (e.g. as part of the process to recover the account). This means that this is information is fixed for a very long period of time. If it happens that some web application is hacked and such an answer is associated with an e-mail address (or worse, with personally identifiable information), it can potentially create a vulnerability for other web applications.

Also, mother’s maiden name might be shared in public space.

Assuming above issues with this security question (or any other security question that relies on a constant within one’s life):

Why is Mother’s Maiden Name still used as a security question?

8 Answers 8

Because people are lazy and/or incompetent. And, well, you know, the Internet is full of chimpanzees.

I would argue that all security questions are bad, but using the mother’s maiden name is exceptionally bad:

There are dozens of countries, with billions of inhabitants between them, where women don’t change their legal name when they marry. The United States in particular has huge immigrant minorities of people from such countries.

Seriously, there are no excuses for this. It’s just bad.

«Security questions» may be the only solution to a hard problem. You’ve got a customer, they’ve lost their password (and their email access) and you’d both like to get them back.

It may not be proportionate to have them perform in person verification at your offices or with a notary, which would really be the only totally secure solution (matching secure government id against their appearance/biometrics).

Lethargy and/or inertia

More seriously institutions relied on this information being essentially secret for a few decades. The age of mass publicised data breaches is very recent.

Most organisations are slow to react to change.

Security questions, just like «complex» password requirements, are rooted in what is called best practice but actually isn’t. Like an oral tradition, many of these practices are passed on from one security person to the next, and rarely questioned (whenever they are questioned, it often turns out they are bogus).

Security questions is one of these things. Someone came up with a reasonable idea, and very soon a fairly standard list of such questions evolved, and since then everyone has basically copied from there, without questioning.

So yes, you are right, this and almost every other «security question» is a danger and typically much, much easier to figure out than even a weak password (e.g. anything that’s not on the top 20 list).

Usability over security, sadly

The banks want to be secure, but face a clientele for which usability is mandatory.

This clientele is not made of our peers. It includes those who fear «the gub’mint», seniors who don’t understand change and resist it, mentally disabled who took years to learn this system and just can’t process another scheme, not to mention staff members e.g. someone acting with power of attorney for an estate or disabled person. Whatever system you devise has to be accessible to all those people, unless you want to have tiers of access. We are stuck with lowest common denominator, or convoying at the speed of the slowest ship.

Money over security: Liability shift

The banking system is built on trust far more than anyone would like to admit. Fraud is contained by very active security staff, who don’t have to outrun the bear. If bank security is just good enough that attackers switch to some easier means of making money, the bank wins. That criminal who would’ve been attacking the bank, instead threatens to be an IRS agent and gets a retiree to voluntarily Western Union their life savings. That retiree can’t come back to the bank and demand their money back, so the bank is in the clear.

This type of «liability shift» is a huge part of bank strategy. Anything they do is going to shift liability away from the bank. They have disincentive to install a stronger system which on failing creates more liability for the bank.

«Security questions» in general are an incredibly stupid idea.

Any time you create a password, it’s routine advice to say that you should not use personal information for a password, like where you went to high school or your favorite color or the make car you drive, because a hacker trying to break into your account might be able to discover or guess these things. Instead, you should use a meaningless string of letters and digits, that should be impossible for anyone to guess.

At least if you used some personal information for a password, the hacker wouldn’t know whether you used your high school or your favorite color or a car make. But with security questions, we TELL him which it is.

If someone knows you, many security questions would be easy to find or guess. Maybe you moved here from another city, but there’s a fair chance you grew up where you live now, so guessing high schools in the area would have a fair chance of getting a hit. He might know what model car you drive. If not, there aren’t all that many different car makes. If you ask people for their favorite color, most people will name one of a dozen or so. (Well, most men, anyway. Women tend to know the names of far more colors than men do.)

One system I just created an account on recently limited their security questions to things with a fairly small number of possibilities, and then provided drop downs for each of them! So tell the hacker, here are the 20 possible passwords someone was allowed to choose from! I’ve seen systems that make me choose a password that is at least 8 characters because if I just typed in 6 or 7, that’s only a few billion possibilities, and a hacker might get it with a brute force attack. But then let’s have an alternate password where we helpfully list the 20 choices. That saves the hacker from having to worry about being tripped up by capitalization or mis-spelling.

what is your mothers maiden name

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mothers maiden name

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last name — noun the name used to identify the members of a family (as distinguished from each member s given name) • Syn: ↑surname, ↑family name, ↑cognomen • Hypernyms: ↑name • Hyponyms: ↑maiden name * * * … Useful english dictionary

family name — noun the name used to identify the members of a family (as distinguished from each member s given name) • Syn: ↑surname, ↑cognomen, ↑last name • Hypernyms: ↑name • Hyponyms: ↑maiden name * * * noun, pl … Useful english dictionary

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what+is+your+mothers+maiden+name

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См. также в других словарях:

Family name — Last name redirects here. For the song, see Last Name. Family name Frankenstein, an example of compound German family names which were typical for Jews (New Jewish Cemetery, Prague) A family name (in Western contexts often referred to as a last… … Wikipedia

last name — noun the name used to identify the members of a family (as distinguished from each member s given name) • Syn: ↑surname, ↑family name, ↑cognomen • Hypernyms: ↑name • Hyponyms: ↑maiden name * * * … Useful english dictionary

family name — noun the name used to identify the members of a family (as distinguished from each member s given name) • Syn: ↑surname, ↑cognomen, ↑last name • Hypernyms: ↑name • Hyponyms: ↑maiden name * * * noun, pl … Useful english dictionary

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Phishing — In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic… … Wikipedia

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