What is the worst security account question?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

What is the worst account security question? (Previously: 2016.)

Students came up with some bad ones, mostly classics:

• name of 1st pet
• favorite teacher's name
• what is your name
• hometown/first school
• your password
• hometown
• I hate all of them
• mother's maiden name is a classic
• first vacation
• what is you username?
• where were you born
• first job
• what street did you grow up on?
• 1st pet name?

The only outlier was the unusually-personally-invasive:

• What was the first name of the first boy or girl you kissed?

This post's theme word is elutriate (v tr), "to purify or separate, especially by washing or straining." The account security question did nothing to elutriate spurious logins from authentic ones.

Are you, in fact, here?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question. Usually I try to make it something creative or interesting, but sometimes I, like everyone else, just time out on creativity and come up entirely and completely blank.

Are you, in fact, here?

Everything along the spectrum of yes-to-no:

• Yup
• yea
• I was here on time :)
• alarm broke but I'm here
• shockingly
• yes
• contrary to popular belief, yes
• basically lol
• physically, yes
• briefly yes, from 9:30-9:30.5
• Just so I don't get fined
• Yes (probably not when you're reading this)
• Yes. maybe
• I hope
• I don't know
• physically, yes, mentally, maybe
• perhaps?
• Well. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know anything
• in theory
• No, I'm [first name]
• NO
• we are not here
• No, my soul is somewhere else
• No, I was here.
• No one is here
• 24 hours late

And then the other sort of answer:

• are you?
• who's "here"?
• carrot
• VC \leq_p WVC

A lot of existential waffling this morning.

This post's theme word is Bulverism (n), the logical fallacy of assuming that your opponent is wrong and explaining their error. Some uppity students are verging into brief Bulverism with their responses to attendance questions.