Your Mother's Maiden Name Is Not A Secret Anne Diebel Analysis

In Anne Diebel's article "Your Mother's Maiden Name Is Not a Secret" from The New York Times, she argues that websites that contain important or personal information "protected" by security questions are not secure and need to be replaced. This article was written just after several cyber attacks that happened the previous year. Although Diebel uses many logical arguments, including statistics and examples, her argument is not effective as a whole because of weak facts, unclear paragraphs, and older information. Deibel begins her article by pointing out that basic security questions have been overlooked and accepted for too long. Diebel blames attributes the blame to banks when they chose security questions to "improve their security measures
She does not just say something and then leave it undefended. For example, when she was discussing the incidents that have happened as a result of security questions, she does a good job of giving examples of both famous people and celebrities that have been targeted and normal, average people's accounts. This helps the reader realize that security questions are an issue, and they should be fixed. Having facts and examples to back her arguments helped get her point across. This argument could also be seen as effective because of the author's credibility. Anne Diebel is a senior investigator a private investigations firm. This lets the reader know that she has the authority, credibility, and knowledge to write about the subject. While this argument is ineffective, Diebel does a fairly good job of getting her point across because it is not an issue that is typically thought about. She makes the reader realize that weak security questions are an issue and that they should be fixed or removed from websites
Some things she could have explained, like what the Equifax breach was and how many people it affected (7). Others needed explained better, such as in the paragraph where she presents some questions that she says assume things and are hard to answer (14), but they seem like they should be useable as security questions to the average reader. Either explaining or giving a quick summary of what happened and what the situation was would have been helpful. Providing some background information or context about the situation so the reader could better understand the seriousness of the event would strengthen her points. Background information would also help the reader understand exactly what happened, why it is a problem, and why it is relevant to the argument Diebel is