Turns out that setting your secret password recovery question is very similar to my earlier article about how to change your MSN Hotmail password, but rather than tell you to go to a different Web page, I'll just show you the steps here instead.

Before I do, though, let me tell you that any site where you have important information probably has some sort of secret identity verification question, be it your birthday, zip code, phone number, or mother's maiden name. My advice to you is always to avoid sharing data that could be useful for identification by identity theft crooks, though, so I would never use my mom's maiden name or the last four digits of my social security number, and I really hate being asked for my birthday too. Birth year, yea, that's okay, but my exact birthday is a bit more than I want to share with different sites.

Log in to your Hotmail account and/or any of your live.com services, then look on the top right of the page, where you'll see:

Well, you should see your name and icon, not mine, but you know what I mean! Click on your name and a menu pops up:

From this menu, choose "View your Account" and you'll be taken to the account information area on Hotmail site / live.com:

Look for the "Question" line, then click on the "Add" button. You'll be able to add a secret account question there:

Wondering what questions you can select from? Click on the menu:

I'm sure you're able to proceed from here. Good luck!