Talk:Forgot Password Cheat Sheet

Secret Questions

I don't want to appear rude here but I thought security questions suck big time, I second Glenn here. Weren't there celebrities accounts hacked of because of well known security questions? But I need to disagree wrt to MFA/2FA: It might be the best, it is often just not an option. IMO this cheat sheet should reflect this part of a non-ideal world, too.

Please keep also in mind that e.g. SMS is not really a 2nd factor when simultaneously it's being send to the same smartphone receiving a mail.

- Dirk 'drwetter' Wetter (Aug 2018)

Should we really be suggesting secret questions/answers in 2017? It's sort of a terrible mechanism, that largely provides little additional security benefit. There are much better options, notably 2FA.

- Glenn 'devalias' Grant (Sept 14, 2017)

Glenn, please see section 3. We explicitly discuss MFA as a critical step. Many companies who do a MFA workflow consider the secret questions step to be optional.

- Jim Manico (Sept 14, 2017)

I know it is mentioned there, but it is mentioned as a 'do this after they fail to answer the questions', only if they fail. There is nothing in that that suggests the secret questions are/could/should be optional. I was going to refer to this as a resource for how to securely implement forgot password functionality, but I don't feel it accurately represents best practice in 2017.

- Glenn 'devalias' Grant (Sept 15, 2017)