What is the purpose of the unique memorable phrase?

When you subscribe to the Stay Smart Online Service by email and/or RSS feeds, you are asked to create your own unique memorable phrase.  The memorable phrase is not secret information in the way that a password is.   The memorable phrase will be included within the content of all Stay Smart Online Alert Service email communications sent to you, including the SSO Alerts and SSO Advisories.

This is an easy way for SSO subscribers to check that the SSO email communications, including the SSO Alerts and/or Advisories are genuine, ie that they were sent by the Stay Smart Online Alert Service.

It is a mechanism that helps prevents subscribers from being tricked by attackers who might send out millions of spam emails to Australian email addresses pretending to be from the Stay Smart Online Alert Service.  If an attacker tries to do this, it is extremely unlikely the attacker will know the unique memorable phrase that belongs to each of the SSO subscribers and hence a fake SSO Alert or Advisory can be more easily detected and ignored.

Therefore, If you receive a SSO Alert or Advisory or other email communication from the SSO Alert Service, it is important to check that it includes your unique memorable phrase.  If it does, then this is a sign that it was probably sent via the SSO portal and that you can trust and rely on its contents.  It does not provide a guarantee that an attacker has not modified the content prior to, or after it is received on your computer but it is very unlikely an attacker would attempt to modify an existing SSO Alert or Advisory that includes your unique memorable phrase.