Abstract
The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background informa tion supplied by theinventors: “As part of determining whether to grant a user access to content (e.g., as part of determiningwhether to provide a caller acce ss to a telephone system that provides banking information), a user ofthe user device may be prompted with one or more authentication questions. Such questions may relateto, for example, a password of the user, a personal identification n umber (PIN) of the user, or the like.Those questions may additionally and/or al ternatively be generated based on personal information of theuser. For example, when setting up an account, a user may provide a variety of answers to predeter minedquestions (e.g., “Where was your father born?,” “Who was your best friend in high school?”), and thosequestions may be presented to the user as part of a n authentication process. As another example, acommercially-available database of personal information may be queried to determine personal informationfor a u ser (e.g., their birthdate, birth location, etc.), and that information may be u sed to generatean authentication question (e.g., “Where were you born, and in w hat year?”). A potential downside ofthese types of authentication questions is that the correct answers may be obtainable and/or guessable forsomeone who has information about a particular user.
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