Patent Document ID: 8387122
Application ID: 12466242

Base Claim:
1. A method for using a computing device to control access to a resource, wherein the access includes one or more of perceiving, modifying, creating, adding to, or deleting the resource, comprising the steps of: (a) enabling a user desiring to provide access to the resource by a specific group of one or more persons who can interact with the computing device, to specify a shared knowledge question and to indicate one or more acceptable answers to the shared knowledge question, wherein the user creates the shared knowledge question so that only the specific group of one or more persons are likely to know an acceptable answer to the shared knowledge question; (b) enabling a person desiring to access the resource, the person being different than the user, to be presented with the shared knowledge question and to respond by entering a proposed answer to the shared knowledge question; (c) using the computing device to automatically employ an inexact matching procedure to determine if the proposed answer at least inexactly matches any of the one or more acceptable answers sufficiently to enable the person to access the resource; and (i) if so, enabling the person to access the resource; else, (ii) if not, denying the person access to the resource.

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Claim 19:
19. The method of claim 1 , further comprising the step of using the computing device for automatically suggesting a shared knowledge question to the user by carrying out one of the steps of: (a) suggesting a category of shared knowledge questions based upon data that have been compiled about the user or about persons who have been identified as friends of the user; (b) suggesting a shared knowledge question based upon data that have been compiled about the user or about the persons who have been identified as friends of the user; (c) identifying interests of the user as a basis for suggesting a shared knowledge question; (d) suggesting a shared knowledge question targeted to content that have been uploaded or downloaded by the user over a network; and (e) suggesting a shared knowledge question derived from a database of shared knowledge questions that correspond to interests and activities of the user.