Do you remember your first pet? Was it a dog, cat, bird, turtle, fish?

[Ocelot II]

43. When you first open an online bank account or a credit card account

you will often be asked some security questions so they can verify that it's really you when someone tries to log into your account or change the password. Usually these are questions that nobody would know the answer to but you, like the make and model of your first car, the street you lived on when you were a child, your father's middle name, or the name of your first pet. Scammers can use bots to search multiple web sites, bulletin boards and social media like Facebook, and collect this sort of information from the answers on public sites to seemingly harmless questions like these. So, if on various social media sites you have revealed, by disclosing various harmless bits of information over time, that - for example - you are a white, middle-aged male, you live in Omaha, grew up in Sioux Falls, went to college in Boston, owned a 1981 Buick Skylark, your father's middle name was George, your first pet was a dog named Spot, etc., identity thieves can use all this along with other accumulated information to figure out who you are and access your online accounts. https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4194-social-media-security-tips.html

The journal starter questions you have been using since your teaching days could not have been used for identity theft or other nefarious purposes in the past, before the Internet; but they can now. And there is nothing wrong with asking the questions; of course people can respond as long as they are comfortable making their answers public.