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ID theft risk for Twitter porn star names

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A Twitter logo yesterdayWhat could be less harmful than a quick tweet about your porn star name? Well, according to one security company, participating in the Twitter trend of combining the name of a first pet and the first street you lived on could reveal more than you think.

Crafty identity thieves mine information from the micro-blogging website, warns The Daily Mail, sorry, Sophos.

“The problem with publically sharing such information is that many sites – such as web email providers – choose questions like ‘what was the name of your first pet?’ as security questions which are used to reset passwords,” said a Sophos spokesman.

To be fair there is form here and in the past Sarah Palin, Paris Hilton and Salma Hayek have all had their private email accounts compromised by hackers guessing their secret answers.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophospointed to a recent poll the company ran that showed a third of people are using the same log-in information across all their online accounts.