KS FEATURE REQUESTS:

I was trying to go 60 days without posting on HN. I't been 42 days. This is important enough to break my silence and at least make a request.

Kickstarter: You deal with personal and financial data. Could you please enable two things for those of us who understand security issues and want better security:

1- Give me the option to not use my email as the login user id.

I've warmed-up to the idea of using randomized user names on sites that allow it. Something like "aoc4sour*!Z". On such sites I have completely different and randomly generated user id's and passwords. Pretty much impossible for an intruder to associate those accounts with any other accounts.

...unless...

They can access personal information such as real name, email, mailing address, phone and other personal identifying data that could contribute towards social engineering into other sites.

hence...

2- Please enable an option to choose two factor authentication.

This should be there as a firewall to access any personal data at all, even email and real name. It should also be required for any financial transaction, including pledging any amount on a project.

I'd say make it optional because the less informed (or less paranoid) might not want to bother.

finally...

3- I love questions such as "What's the name of your first pet?". How about some of those?

I am being a bit sarcastic here. When answered honestly these questions are really dangerous. It doesn't take a lot of social engineering to figure out most of them when armed with enough personal data.

However, I like to answer such questions with a random set of words. So, the name of my first pet might be "blue ladder tent aquifer". In other words, pretty much impossible to guess even if I gave you access to my facebook and linkedin accounts.

When used in this fashion these questions, I think, are actually useful. I'd venture to guess that most people don't do it this way because they don't understand the implications of providing straight answers.

These kinds of breaches have been accelerating. At least that's the feeling I'm getting. This to the point that I had a sit-down security meeting at home to make sure everyone at home understands what's going on and the fact that we need to make sure we use different passwords for every site and service and even different user names where possible. Pain in the ass but far less so than having your life turned upside-down by one of these idiots.

Any thoughts, comments or improvements on the above will be highly appreciated.

BACK TO LURKING:

In the meantime, I am going to see about going back into mostly lurking mode on HN. I found it quite revealing to take a real break from reading and posting on HN. For the last 42 days I've checked HN's first page nearly daily and only scan a few threads very quickly, dismiss most of them and refrain from posting comments (until this one).

ON ANOTHER TOPIC: HELL-BANNED?

I wanted to initiate a thread to share my observations and reflections after, well, now 42 days of just glancing at HN and not posting. However, either I am the subject of a strange hellban or something is broken. I can post comments all I want but I don't seem to be able to start new threads. Not sure how to fix it. Too bad.