Patent ID: 8413220

Claim:
A method of user authentication comprising: receiving, from a user, a first selection of a first image, wherein the first image is associated with a template answer, wherein the template answer describes information absent from the first image and known to the user, and wherein the template answer comprises a plurality of words each assigned a weight representing relevance to the template answer; notifying, by a computer processor, a server application of the first selection; sending, by the computer processor, the template answer to the server application; sending, after notifying the server application and sending the template answer, a request to the server application to initiate an authentication process; receiving, after sending the request, a first plurality of images comprising the first image; displaying the first plurality of images to the user; receiving, from the user and in response to displaying the first plurality of images, a second selection of the first image from the first plurality of images and a test answer associated with the first image; notifying, by the computer processor, the server application of the second selection; and sending, by the computer processor, the test answer to the server application, wherein the server application calculates a comparison metric by: identifying a plurality of matching words between the test answer and the template answer; and summing a plurality of weights corresponding to the plurality of matching words to generate the comparison metric, and wherein authentication of the user by the server application is based on the second selection and the comparison metric.