I’m signing up for an online bank account and I’m faced with the inevitable Stupid Security Questions, where I have to select from a list of questions and provide answers that “only I would know”. The problem is that all of the standard questions have already been abused:
* What’s your mother’s maiden name?
* What are the last four digits of your Social Security Number?
* Where were you born?
So now they have to resort to things like:
Come on– even I don’t know the answers to some of these! I have no idea what high school Laralee attended, nor do I know my father’s mother’s middle name. And if I choose something like “What was your favorite college year” it’s not like I have a particular year that was so rockin’ awesome that I would always remember, “Oh yeah, 1993 was my best year in college ever!”
So instead I just pick various questions and always answer them with the same thing: “Steve”.
* Note that I don’t actually put “Steve”, but you get the idea. The real word I use is much more secret than that, and certainly I can’t publish it here where the Identity Thieves’ Guild would find it.