Another security question WTF
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Yesterday I signed up to an offer on the Virgin Mobile website. One part of the process is security question and answer.
I selected Mothers Maiden Name, entered my answer, hit Continue and.... your answer must be between 6-20 characters.
Ok, this is a WTF but we've seen it before.
So, first pet's name? No, less than 6 characters.
Favourite band? Changes. Currently it's AC/DC, so also less than 6 characters.
Aha - Place Of Birth. I enter the town I was born to discover it also kicks it out, because.... it doesn't allow spaces! WTF? Only letters (and, amusingly, numbers are allowed). So I can be born in a town that has numbers in the name, but I can't be born in Thornton Heath.
Clever.
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have you ever thought about moving or renaming your pet?
Wouldn't that be easy and spare you a lot of trouble?
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I think we should replace all names on earth with GUIDs or IPv6 adresses. THAT would save a lot of trouble.
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@Quicksilver said:
have you ever thought about moving or renaming your pet?
Wouldn't that be easy and spare you a lot of trouble?
How would moving change the town you were born in?
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@shadowman said:
@Quicksilver said:
have you ever thought about moving or renaming your pet?
Wouldn't that be easy and spare you a lot of trouble?
How would moving change the town you were born in?
Quicksilver was probably talking about moving the soul (into another body). Everybody should do that from time to time.
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@valerion said:
Aha - Place Of Birth. I enter the town I was born to discover it also kicks it out, because.... it doesn't allow spaces! WTF? Only letters (and, amusingly, numbers are allowed). So I can be born in a town that has numbers in the name, but I can't be born in Thornton Heath.
Clever.
Sounds a bit like a radio ad for car oil changes running here. Goes something like this:
store: "how's this wednesday at 1 for you?"
customer: "Sorry, I'm at working then"
store: "how about the wednesday after that?"
customer: "sorry, also working"
store: "how about wednesday in 2 weeks?"
customer: "umm, I work on wednesdays"
store: "How attached to your job are you?"
customer: "what!?"
store: "well, it sounds like they've got you on a short leash..."Which then segues into "come to XXX, we're open 24x7! come when it's convenient for you"
Very Mythbusters... I reject your reality and substitute my own.
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@valerion said:
Favourite band? Changes. Currently it's AC/DC, so also less than 6 characters.
Not to mention, asking questions about things that change is a bad idea. For example, I may like AC/DC now (for the purposes of this example, anyway, but who in the right mind would?), then, 4 years from now when I forget my password, my favorite band will be The Spice Girls. You never know!
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@rbowes said:
4 years from now when I forget my password, my favorite band will be The Spice Girls. You never know!
You could just put that because no body in their right mind would put that as an answer and therefore no on would guess it... on the other hand ithasspaces so they wouldn't let you have it anyway.
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I usually treat this as a second password field so my answer is always 123456. Works for my luggage too.
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@annc said:
I usually treat this as a second password field so my answer is always 123456. Works for my luggage too.
Well done on the Spaceballs reference!
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@shadowman said:
How would moving change the town you were born in?
Because the same town can have different names in different languages. For example, I am born in Vienna. (6 letters, ok). In German, the city's name is "Wien" (4 letters, bad luck). In Polish, it's "Wieden". etc.
So all you have to do is move to a country where the (local) name of your place of birth is acceptable by the standards for security questions. Can't be that hard.
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I'd really love to know when there is going to be some backlash against the stupid, brain-dead, user-hostile, utterly sociopathic methods of "security." I told my bank how I felt about them, and I encourage others to do so as well. It's fine to laugh at cases like this, but when they are used in the context of sensitive information and systems we use all the time?
Say NO to 1.5-factor authentication!
