We’ve all seen the increase in security measures being taken by online banking, shopping sites and other web-based products, but did you know that security measures are equally important to your Bsafe Online account?

The security question/answer you create for your Bsafe Online account could be one of the single most important customizations you can make to keep your family protected! Odds are your children know your mother’s maiden name. If they don’t know it off-hand, they know where they can find it. So take a few minutes to learn about the importance of the security question and how to create and maintain a secure account with us.

As part of our Technical Support process, we require customers to verify their password in order to provide support to the account. If a customer has forgotten their password we will ask if they can answer a “security question” that has been created. Or the customer can change their password online without contacting Technical Support as long as the answer to the security question is known. Many times customers create such an easy question that almost anyone (including their teenager) could answer it. Once a person (other than the customer) knows the answer to the security question they can easily request the password. With the password they could turn off filtering, use the password to override blocked sites or worse yet, uninstall and re-install the filter all without the customer's knowledge.

The most important part of the security question/answer process is the answer itself. Some people find that creating a very unique, unusual security question offers the best solution for security, while others have found that making a creative answer is equally as effective.

Here are a few examples:

Examples of strong security questions:
What is your favorite teacher’s name?
What is the name of the first person you kissed?

A strong security question is...
Any question that only you know the answer to.

Example of weak security questions:
What is your mother’s maiden name?
What is your dog’s name?
What is your favorite color?

Example of security questions with strong answers
What is your mother’s maiden name? j0n3s (Jones)
What is your dog’s name? 9lu2o (Pluto)
Create simple exchanges between numbers, letters and capitalizations to create a unique answer that isn’t easy to figure out.

Please take a few minutes to think about your security question/answer. Need to update them? Do so now! It only takes a moment and doing so will provide you a level of comfort knowing your account is secure. Click here to learn how.