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?

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.

Exactry. I don't care if someone wants to hack into my child's account and pay for their school lunch. They are more than welcome to so why have multiple layers of security?

I often think the questions aren't very secure anyway. You can find my mum's maiden name from a quick Facebook search. I can't use the street I grew up on because I still live here, so it's easy to figure out if you know my address. I usually end up going with favourite teacher or favourite holiday destination - but I'm pretty sure I end up using a different answer every time!

@DoTheNextRightThing

I often think the questions aren't very secure anyway. You can find my mum's maiden name from a quick Facebook search. I can't use the street I grew up on because I still live here, so it's easy to figure out if you know my address. I usually end up going with favourite teacher or favourite holiday destination - but I'm pretty sure I end up using a different answer every time!

That's not the system that's insecure though, it's your use of social media. You can't find out the names of my parents from social media let alone their maiden name.

Mother's maiden name is rarely used any more because it's very easy to find out using commercially available sites like Ancestry. It's information in the public domain anyway.

I'd say it was fairly unusual to live your whole life on the same street. First school appears to be a fairly common one, or name of first pet. That's not something you're likely to be able to guess.

Those of you who use Lastpass or other apps in the same vein - what if technology lets you down? I had to use telephone banking instead of online the other day because my laptop gave up and the replacement hadn't arrived and we had a power cut, so no internet access. I admit having both of those happen at once is unlikely to be a regular thing, but surely there is also the chance that whatever password keeping app you are using could fail?

You don't have to tell the truth to any of these questions, you just have to remember what you did say. It doesn't even have to make sense as an answer. Make it something factual and obscure and you can even make a note of it safely.

So - "what is your favourite food" (Look up in your notebook "The surname of the family whose cat I looked after as a child") "Robinson"

@WuthPP

Those of you who use Lastpass or other apps in the same vein - what if technology lets you down? I had to use telephone banking instead of online the other day because my laptop gave up and the replacement hadn't arrived and we had a power cut, so no internet access. I admit having both of those happen at once is unlikely to be a regular thing, but surely there is also the chance that whatever password keeping app you are using could fail?

I have offline access on my phone app and you can login on any device you have so it's never been a problem in the years I've used password managers but if everything did fall down, I'd either do forgotten password reset on the service I wanted or just wait