tssci security

What is my favorite movie?!!

I asked a colleague once how to answer those silly questions, you know, the ones banks and other sites like to use to reset passwords? They're used to verify you are, who you say you "were." Well, my bank at the start of the year had introduced some security enhancements to their site and also required me to choose and answer five questions.

So today, I'm in a hurry and want to login to my bank account before I head off to class and before taking me to my account, it asks me "What is your favorite movie?" Ummm, okay.. What did I put? I completely forgot! My favorite movies change frequently, and I ended up going through Facebook and MySpace profiles to try and remember what my favorite movie could be (I have so many??), and no luck! After about trying fifteen different titles (are the answers case sensitive?), the page displays a notice that my online account has been disabled and call some number to unlock it.

What bullshit! And this happened to someone who's relatively "security aware" (in my opinion). I felt the frustration so many of our own users feel when they do not remember that stupid, ridiculously hard-to-remember password we make them change every 45 days. The problem is that my bank likes to randomly pick and choose when to ask you these questions. In my case, it was extremely frustrating.

Oh, and almost immediately after I got locked out of my account, one of my instructors had reminded of a quote from my favorite movie.. Want to know what it was?? Yeah, that's right...

Office Space.

Posted by Marcin on Wednesday, April 4, 2007 in Intelligence, Privacy and Security.

blog comments powered by Disqus
blog comments powered by Disqus