You should never give legit answers to these security questions. I just paste in the output of pwgen -s 32 1. This may make your account harder to "recover" but it also makes it harder to steal.
Re:The weakest link by far is Apple
by raverbashing on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @05:06PM
(#4352305)
For a compromise, you can add the correct answer but with a quirk. (that is easier, unless you forget the quirk)
like, put the first name in "Mother's maiden name", or the middle name, or swap their position
And you are right to treat it as a passsword
Yes, this is exactly what I do. I have interesting results sometimes;
Bank: I'll just need you to confirm your mother's maiden...um...um
Me: Yes, it's a long string of random characters, want me to read it?
Bank: No, that's ok, thanks.
Many sites use things which are public information (mother's maiden name) but even question's like "Where were you on this important date?" or "what was your first car?" start to look pretty silly in the age of Facebook. Worse, a dropbox-loving facebooker who's checking his gmail account from his iPhone probably has enough information in many of those places to compromise the other accounts.