Kevin's Weblog

My bank has added an extra layer of security to its home banking system, in the form of “security questions”. The way this works is that you pick three questions out of a dozen or so, and provide answers. Now, when you try to log in from an “unrecognized” computer, in addition to your password, you get asked the questions as well.

Sounds well and good: just authorize your computer and don’t worry about it. Except that I have two computers I use regularly. Today I tried to log in from the second machine, and couldn’t figure out the answer to the questions. That is to say, I know the answers perfectly well, but I couldn’t remember if I capitalized, abbreviated, or otherwise obfuscated the answers. After three failures, I found myself locked out of my account.

I called customer service and easily enough authenticated myself to the woman on the phone and got her to reset everything. I explained what had happened, and her suggestion was to pick a single word and use it as the answer for all three questions. “That’s what I do.” Sigh. I didn’t take her advice, but this time I made damn sure to remember the conventions of my answers.