Online Security Questions and Passwords

[fancyginglass]

A couple of weeks ago I thought I had lost my purse and cancelled all my cards. Annoyingly found it the week later but never mind. Anyway I was phoning up the credit card company and I had to go through security. One of the questions I was asked was who I would most like to meet. Now, I racked my brains and couldn't come up with the answer - asked if it was Elvis, no. Anyway finally passed security only to ask the girl who it was and she said George Clooney. I told her that was ages ago and I didn't fancy him so much any more. Anyone else have issues with online passwords and security questions they can't remember the answer to?

Loads of options when choosing the security questions are unanswerable for me: mother's middle name, favourite cousin, favourite sports team etc. And the rest, like you say OP, change. I can't remember what my favourite meal was several years ago.

I really struggle to find questions I can answer.

At work we have 5 questions we have to answer. I have the same 1 word answer for every question

I've been caught out with this before with little-used accounts. What pusses me off more though is when you have to sign up for something - not even something particularly sensitive - and they make you jump through hoops of fire to enter a password. It had to be at least ten character long, include a mixture of upper and lower case, symbols and at least one number. It is infuriating. I have no hope of remembering it. Yet my online banking password is astonishingly simple!

Yes and then you feel such a fool when you can't answer it. I try to pick ones with answers that aren't subjective - like make of first car

I hate the favourite teacher type ones, I don't have single consistent favourite anythings.

Agree this it the worst. Also they seem to have issues around how it’s been written sometimes, especially if you give the answer over the phone originally. Had one they other day where the answer was my fathers place of birth, give characters 1 and 3, remember they are case sensitive. So say my Dad was born in Glasgow (he wasn’t, but for e.g.) so I said “upper case G and lowercase a” but it failed and continued to fail and I was stumped as I would never have given a different answer- that’s his birth place! But the red herring was that the answer was inputted as “glasgow” and not “Glasgow”. So frustrating.

Lasspass. Keeps all the passwords and stupid questions with the answers in a vault. No need to remember any of it.

I had to phone Sky the other day and had to answer a security question of 'special date' this had been set by DH and having run out of children's birthdays I moved on to another question. Later in the call I asked the date and was incredulous at 10th May, and phoned DH to rant about this insignificant date and how was i ever supposed to get that - until he pointed out 10th May is our wedding anniversary!!

Oh my god I was only thinking this 10 mins ago trying to get into my sainsburys bank account online. Username, password, memorable number. The quicker everything moves over to Face ID the better!!

I know it’s not always possible but I try and pick the ones which don’t change (mother’s maiden name, first pet, first school etc) - the favourite colour/food/celeb crush ones are impossible to remember after a few years!

I failed the mother's maiden name one once because they said it was too short. They weren't happy it only has 4 letters, despite being perfectly happy with my own last name that only has 3 letters.

My primary school - now was it?
Saint Theresa's
St Theresas Primary
St. Theresa's RC Primary School
The amount of permutations on that one...
And that's usually the most factual option because I never have a bloody favourite colour!!

@jillandhersprite

My primary school - now was it? Saint Theresa's St Theresas Primary St. Theresa's RC Primary School The amount of permutations on that one... And that's usually the most factual option because I never have a bloody favourite colour!!

^^ This

My worst one was when I called O2:

Them: Whats the answer to your security question?

Me: Whats the question

Them: we can't tell you that

Me: WTF 🧐

I have a set of stock answers for security questions, none of them are real information. I have them in an envelope somewhere which would be meaningless to anybody else.

I use a question that would always have the same answer and I'd never forget. First pets name for example.

I just wrote them all down as soon as I finish setting them up. It's not like an online scammer will ever have access to my notebook...

You just have to hope your notebook is never stolen in a burglary.

Friend was burgled and they tore her entire house upside down and didn't stop until they'd found some jewellry at the back of a wardrobe.

We have no jewellery at all in this house, all tech is at least five years old, so I don't know when they'd give up looking for something worth stealing. We do have decent bikes, otherwise the most valuable things we have are my gin collection, but I don't think there's much value in a dozen or so half drunk bottles of craft gin. I've just got to hope they don't spot the tatty notebook with partial and disguised password reminders.

Use a password keeper like lastpass or bitwarden so you can keep all your unique passwords without remembering. They normally let you add notes too so can put in security question hints or answers

@Wingingitsince2018

My worst one was when I called O2:

Them: Whats the answer to your security question?

Me: Whats the question

Them: we can't tell you that

Me: WTF 🧐

Yes I got pissy and answered aardvark surprisingly that was the answer

You need to keep records of them in a secure password manager or in a notebook locked in a safe that only you can access.

Also your answer should be different for every organisation. So if ten different organisations want to know your mother's maiden name, she should have ten different maiden names. Even better if they aren't real names at all but random combinations of letters.

Otherwise if one gets hacked they will all get access to all your accounts.

The notebook idea is susceptible to burglars as someone pointed out above.

What really are the chances of a burglar finding a notebook as opposed to a hacker gaining access to your accounts?

I have a notebook - initials of accounts with initials of passwords and questions asked. Eg E(WA)E Elinor (wedding anniversary) Edward would be our initials plus our wedding anniversary giving password e150493e (not real password). Easy for prompt for me but meaningless to anybody else.

Lasspass. Keeps all the passwords and stupid questions with the answers in a vault. No need to remember any of it.

This 100%

Lastpass has been a game changer for me.

"favourite" anything is subjective. First is much better - don't think i've ever been asked who I'd most like to meet, but have been asked about the first street i lived on, or the first school attended.

A tip I once saw was to have them written down in an address book as series of names and addresses which are on different roads in different towns and nobody but you would be able to work out which are the passwords as none are just in one address or in full in any address.