Verification drives me mad!

[Treaclewell]

Does anyone else find it infuriating? They need to text me on my old Nokia phone which is up two flights of stairs, I don't need it when I am at home, I;ve got a landline, and the display is two small for the sodding One Time Password to be read, and the battery is prbably dead anyway. And there's the I am not a robot stuff with acres of American street furniture and crosswalks. I exclude Halifax from this rant. They allow me to choose which method and have voice recognition. But I have spent half the morning at times trying to get in to a bank which has deleted a DD and blames me for missing a payment. I could eliminate this problem by not letting my security software delete cookies at the end of each session, I suppose, but I want to eliminate cookies. Aren't I allowed to? It is not good for my blood pressure. eBay is at it now, and says "choose your method" but only offers that nokia. I shall break into song from Oliver. I shall scream! And never use eBay again.

MFA is a great thing and it's there to protect you. They don't know you don't have a bigger phone.
I have 3 layers of MFA to get into my work laptop so am well used to it

Honestly, it's for your own good. I know it can be a pain but without it we are all very vulnerable. Can't you keep your Nokia downstairs?

Virgin Bank decided to use my landline for verification, without consulting me. Unfortunately I moved house before I realised. To change the number you have to log in, but if you don’t have the phone they use to verify you can’t log in. They literally don’t ever answer their phone, I have been on the phone for hours waiting for them to pick up. In the end I had to go into a branch to get it sorted.

Choose a different method then? Most say authentication app, WhatsApp, text message, facial recognition , fingerprint phonecall , never seen one that said some old Nokia you never use, that's down to you.

I share your pain .
I sometimes get stuck in a neverending cycle of identifying cars, crosswalks . And can anyone tell me-if one is ticking all the boxes with a bike /motorbike , do you need to tick the box showing a tiny bit of handlebar/wing mirror /mudguard etc ?

Try living in the middle of nowhere where there's no mobile signal anyway!

I may sound like an Apple bot but I find having everything linked to my phone and being able to use Face ID makes MFA generally very easy. I don’t miss having little pin devices to generate codes to access online banking.

I am fucked if I lose my phone though!

I’m so sick of text codes for every single thing! I understand why, but it still annoys me!

Our bank sends my codes to DH phone and his codes to mine. I get an error code when I try to set up online banking.

Most say authentication app, WhatsApp, text message, facial recognition , fingerprint phonecall ,
nope- code to phone or email are the extent of choices I've ever been offered.
Still, I take your point ~ how very dare the OP to find it frustrating and difficult.

I want to know this too!

This is my question too!

You'd soon be complaining if you were scammed/hacked and lost a shedload of money to a fraudster, wouldn't you?

You have choices and options. You can choose to get a more modern mobile phone. You can choose to use your phone for internet banking instead of a laptop. If you find your bank's security too hard to use or inconvenient, then you're free to move to a different bank.

It's exactly what I've done a few times. I used to use a M&S credit card and used to have a Shawbrook bank savings account. Both were an absolute nightmare with security and made it almost impossible to reset security if you forgot your password or it locked you out due to too many unsuccessful login attempts. I ditched them both. I use other banks such as Halifax, Santander, and Monzo, who have better login systems that still have protection but are far more user friendly and far easier to reset passwords etc. (and easier to talk to a human if I still can't log in).

If you're unhappy with your current bank (or other provider) then just move.

No one forces you to stay with a bank that has an inflexible system and few options. Just ditch them and move to another!

Yes!!! I so empathise with this. To add to the frustration, some debit/credit card providers don't ask for a security code if you have bought from a company before but others (glares at Milk and More) won't even let you buy an extra pint of milk without re-entering the card number and a security code.

My iMac and iPad are linked to my phone so the code just pops up on them, then I just autofill it, so all good here.

I have an iPhone which autofills my card details then I just need to input the security code
I have to really concentrate on the photo verification though but better that than scammed
Face ID irritates me more

It's very frustrating at times. I do wonder how people who use screen readers manage half these checks.

I hate it, particularly when it’s not done well so it redirects you somewhere where you also need to add your password but you changed your password on your work laptop and it’s not synched to your personal phone so it won’t let you in so you hit forgot password but then you need to go to email and reset it but that opens into a different browser which suddenly wants to run updates and your bastarding fingerprint stopped working because you’re all dehydrated from breastfeeding so it’s got extra wrinkles in it so you opt for the passcode but then it’s a full moon and yes I’m ticking the fucking motorcycles you arseholes and no I don’t want a sodding text verification I ticked the box saying remember me but fucking HMRC won’t remember you longer than seven days but it takes them 800 days to do anything, the wankers.

Can’t the fraudsters just get jobs like the rest of us, then there’d be no need for it.

so you have security software that deletes all your cookies immediately (making your online experience much less convenient) but verification is a problem?

It doesn’t matter.

Captcha is only really looking for human behaviour patterns in the data capture. Sometimes when you click the I Am Not A Robot box you won’t get the images at all because the Captcha has already detected human behaviour patterns in something like your mouse tracking/clicks. Sometimes it takes a couple of attempts at choosing images before it has the information it needs to determine you’re a human so you get another set of images. Getting it exactly ‘right’ isn’t really that important.

Oh and also CAPTCHA might also look for cookies stored on your browser, as well as the device's history, to make sure you’re not just using the device to get in to its system. Real humans would usually have all kinds of cookies stored from their normal behaviour in using their devices. So if you regularly delete your history, you’re going to get CAPTCHA more often.

@MandyMotherOfBrian oh thank you that's really helpful to know .
It may be something to do with when I'm on my laptop as I have a plug in keyboard and sometimes do some characters on the laptop keyboard and some on the plug in one.
Thank you again.

@reclaimmyboobs brilliant post . Do you write for a newspaper ? You should !

@Kazzyhoward yes the procedures are there for a good reason .
Doesn't stop them being frustrating though.
And having choices which involve more things to add to ones to do list - like changing banks-doesn't actually cancel out the frustration.