Most financial related sites these days all ask for security questions or are finally getting on the bandwagon to make their sites more secure. This would all be ok if they were doing this in a simple way of maybe one or two questions or possibly giving us a choice if we want this added hassle or protection.
The trick is that if you answer the security questions the same on every site that you end up doing the same thing wrong as answering passwords on all the log-ins the same. You want most of your secure log-ins to be different. The problem is that there is no human way to remember all of these passwords and security questions for each banking, brokerage, bill payment, and credit card site.
You have to try and remember what you typed in for your first road your drove on, the first elementary school teacher, the hospital you were born in, and maybe even the name of the diaper brand your parents used on you. I could go on and mention the name of your first pet or the one you picked could it have been your dogs name or the cats name or that horse your uncle owned.
Roboform comes in handy for the passwords but there is nothing that comes in to help for the security questions unless you somehow manipulate Roboform to do this. If you have a Mac there is a 1Password and I have yet to find a way to answer security questions within that software.
TD Ameritrade sent an email this week saying that security questions were coming and that we needed four to log-in to their new system. Emigrant Direct has a picture to recognize, a security question, and a birth date question. The most annoying is HSBC Direct Banking where you have to use the mouse to put in your security word instead of typing it in and im sure this will catch on to other paranoid banks.
There is a problem with Identity Theft, phishing, and stolen passwords online but that is mostly due to using virus contaminated computers, going to fraudulent log-in pages by not making sure they say “https://”, and other avoidable instances. The banks and credit companies already have highly secure sites that in most cases its not likely anyone can steal your information if you use Roboform where you normally do not have to type any passwords because it fills it in for you.
The personal and business finance companies need to back off with all the security because soon we will not be looking for lower interest rates or credit offers but for sites that do not take more than ten minutes to see our information.
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