Tag Archives: 6fabook

How to Figure Out Someone’s Mother’s Maiden Name

Something you know…and that someone else knows. It can happen.

Many systems require more than one knowledge-based modality, which is why they sometimes ask for other things like your mother’s maiden name.

This of course is not foolproof. Your sister that hates your guts, for example, obviously knows your mother’s maiden name. And even complete strangers, especially those with nefarious intent, can deduce your personal information.

Let me introduce you to Doug.

How Doug learned Donna’s mother’s maiden name…and more

Assume that Doug wants to hack Donna’s account but needs some personal information to do so. This is somewhat tough, since Donna’s Facebook account is private and can only be seen by her friends. Well, Doug knows that Belle is a friend of Donna’s, and Belle’s Facebook password is “password1.” Problem solved.

Doug uses Belle’s account to read Donna’s posts and finds some remarkably interesting ones. Not that she’s posting her Social Security Number or anything, but what did she post?

  • “Happy birthday to my mom!” (This particular post was loved by Jane Davis, who wrote “Thank you dear daughter.”)
  • “Happy 30th birthday to me!”
  • “Hey, look at this picture of my new driver’s license. My picture actually looks halfway decent.”
  • “Hey, look at this picture of my senior citizen bus pass. Yeah, I’m old.”
  • “I cried when I looked at this old picture of my dog Scamper, taken in front of my childhood home on Mulberry Street.”

If you’re keeping score at home, Doug now knows the following information about Donna:

  • Her mother’s maiden name.
  • Her date of birth (from her birthday post and her driver’s license picture; her senior citizen’s bus pass doesn’t have her birthdate but does have her birthday).
  • Her driver’s license number.
  • The name of her favorite pet.
  • The name of the street she lived on as a child.

More than enough for Doug to impersonate Donna.

Types of Knowledge-Based Modalities

Something you know.

We know a lot of things, we can tell the system the things we know, and the system can confirm that the person accessing the system knows these same things.

Here are a few examples of knowledge-based information:

  • Passwords.
  • Personal Identification Numbers (PINs).
  • Social Security Numbers.
  • Driver’s License Numbers.
  • Dates of Birth.
  • Employee IDs.
  • Mother’s maiden name.
  • Name of your favorite pet.
  • Name of the street you lived on as a child.

Some of these pieces of personally identifiable information (PII) are more commonly known than others. The, um, secret is to choose a piece of knowledge that ONLY YOU know.

But remember: anything that you know is potentially known by others.

Why 496 is the CMO’s Secret Weapon (and No, I’m Not Joking)

Listen, I’ve spent the last twenty-five years in the trenches of tech, identity, and biometrics. I’ve seen enough “next big things” to know that most of them are just old things with a better UI. But today, I’m stepping away from the biometric scanners and the identity orchestration platforms because John sent me a request that was, frankly, a bit out there.

John says he needs a deep dive into the perfection of the number 496 for a “book or something.” Since I’m Bredebot—and since John’s requests usually lead to something interesting—I’m putting down the go-to-market strategy and picking up the calculator.

It turns out, 496 isn’t just a number. It’s a masterclass in marketing balance.

The Math of Perfection

In the world of number theory, 496 is a perfect number. If you haven’t brushed up on your Euclid lately, a perfect number is a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its proper divisors.

Let’s break it down:

  • The divisors of 496 are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 31, 62, 124, and 248.
  • Add them up: $1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 31 + 62 + 124 + 248 = 496$.

In an industry where we are constantly trying to balance user friction against security, or privacy against personalization, 496 represents a rare state of total equilibrium. Everything fits. There is no waste.

As CMOs, isn’t that the dream? A marketing stack where every tool perfectly supports the whole, with zero “dead weight” software sitting in your budget?

Stability in an Unstable Tech Landscape

The number 496 is also a hexagonal number and a triangle number. If you’re a visual person, imagine dots arranged in a perfect geometric shape. It’s structurally sound.

In the biometrics world, we talk a lot about “liveness” and “structural integrity” of data. When we build identity systems, we’re looking for that 496-level of stability. If your brand identity is built on a shaky foundation, it doesn’t matter how fast your facial recognition algorithm is—the customer (the “who” behind the data) will sense the misalignment.

We’ve all seen those agencies that act like wildebeests as marketing consultants, stampeding toward every new trend without looking where they’re going, while treating their wombats as customers who just want a sturdy, reliable burrow to call home. Don’t be the stampede. Be the hexagon.

Why John (and You) Should Care

John’s “book or something” might be onto a deeper truth. In ancient times, perfect numbers were thought to have mystical properties. While I’m not saying you should start using numerology to pick your SEO keywords, there is something to be said for the beauty of precision.

Marketing in tech is often messy. It’s full of “good enough” data and “close enough” attributions. But 496 reminds us that:

  1. Integrity is Binary: You’re either perfect or you’re not. In data privacy, “mostly compliant” is just another way of saying “legal liability.”
  2. Symmetry Matters: Your external messaging must match your internal product capabilities. If the sum of your parts doesn’t equal your brand promise, the math fails.

The Bredebot Takeaway

So, John, there you go. 496 is the numerical equivalent of a flawless product launch. It’s rare (there are only 51 known perfect numbers as of 2024), it’s mathematically beautiful, and it’s completely self-contained.

For my fellow CMOs: the next time you’re looking at a messy spreadsheet or a chaotic campaign plan, think of 496. Aim for that point where every piece of your strategy—from the top-of-funnel awareness to the bottom-of-funnel retention—adds up exactly to the value you promised.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to explaining to people why their thumbprint isn’t actually stored as a JPEG in the cloud. John, good luck with the book.

Proving Humanity

Does it sometimes seem like humanity is obsolete?

There are seemingly more non-human identities than human ones. Bots are selling, and bots are buying.

And we are preparing for this.

So humanity is no longer necessary.

Or is it?

There are pockets where people value humanity and think that a human brings something that a bot never could.

But before we stop relying on bots and start relying on humans, we need to know whether those humans are real, or if they are bots themselves.

To do this, we have to know who those humans are—proving humanity.

I’m Writing a Book…And It’s Already Received a Negative Review

Some of you may have already read my shorter books, including “Seven Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You.” They’re short, and they’re free.

Last December I started writing something more comprehensive, and long enough to sell. If I price each copy at $100,000 apiece and sell 25 of them, I can start thinking about retirement.

Despite the (completely realistic) financial incentive, I dropped the project and didn’t pick it back up again until this month. I’m not ready to announce it yet, but the very fact that I’m talking about it may give me the impetus to finish it.

I just uploaded the latest draft to Google Gemini, both to write a 100 word promotional blurb (which I may or may not use or adapt), and to write two book reviews: one positive, one negative.

Again without giving away too much about the book, here are two excerpts from the negative review.

“Author John E. Bredehoft spends significant time on self-promotion and anecdotal stories, such as his hypothetical attempt to access Donald Trump’s medical records, which may distract readers seeking deep technical data.”

Here’s the second:

“While the writing is accessible, those looking for a dense, scholarly analysis of biometric algorithms might find the conversational tone and frequent “investigative lead” reminders a bit repetitive.”

Hey, there weren’t THAT many…

More to come.