My mother's maiden

Keep your security questions short if you want them to fit in an iPhone scrolling menu. Or perhaps these are real life examples of those Nihilistic Security Questions I mentioned a few months ago.

Perhaps we could mix these up a bit...
Why were you born?
Who is your favourite mother?
What is in a name?

Security questions again: I wish I'd thought of this

Have a look at Soheil Rezayazdi's Nihilistic Password Security Questions.

Sample:
What is the name of your least favorite child?
In what year did you abandon your dreams?
What is the maiden name of your father’s mistress?
At what age did your childhood pet run away?

More stupid questions

More stupid security questions, this time from the Transport for London Oyster card website.

I'm surprised the first question doesn't have a drop-down menu offering 'Fatso / Spotty / Dweeb / Stinker'.

When I appeared at school wearing spectacles for the first time, a rather old-fashioned teacher took to calling me 'gig lamps', but I'm not planning to share that with Oyster thanks very much.

Why is so much market research incompetent?

Everyone now and then I get sent a questionnaire, and I try to help by responding. Today I got one from All Bar One (bar + food chain), who said I'd used their wifi recently (i.e., that's how they got my name).

These questionnaires almost always have an impossible question. In this case it was 'how often do you eat out at All Bar One'. The answer is 'never', which means all the follow-up questions are impossible. I can lie, or I can crash out.

Apple's daft questions: my answers

This may not be very secure of me, but Apple have asked me those daft questions again (this time on my laptop - last time it was the iPhone).

This time I've answered truthfully.

More daft security questions... from Apple this time

My Apple account has suddenly demanded I set up some security questions so at some future date they can interrogate me to see if I am who I say I am.

Who writes these things? I've no idea of the answers to any of these questions. I actually remembered the wrong car as being the first one, and found I couldn't correct it. I could make something up, but who's to say I'll invent same thing when the Apple cop is on the phone.

In which city was I first kissed. Huh? How old are you, Apple?

Olympic security

In case you thought I'd lost interest in inept security questions (see here, here and here) I've just registered on the London Olympics ticket website.

Braving the shameful logo that I still can't get used to, I'm confronted by this choice of security questions:

Unfortunately at the age of fifty something, 'best friend' isn't a concept I think about much. I don't have a favourite sportsperson or a favourite food for that matter... at least not one that I could reliably remember two years later.

And what about all those poor sods who put Wayne Rooney down as their favourite sportsperson? Is there a way to change your mind?

I hope this isn't the entire Olympic security effort. Anyone who puts Osama bin Laden down as their best friend just won't get a ticket. That should do it.

More memorable security questions

I had an account with First Direct for a short while about ten years ago (I used to open all sorts of accounts just to collect documents that might be relevant to clients we were working for). Now I'm opening another account with them, it turns out they haven't forgotten - they asked me the answers to security questions I set up in around 1998. I couldn't remember my memorable date, my memorable address or my memorable name.

So now I have to choose two new questions to remember at various random points in the future where it will really matter (such as when I have lost my card, or can't log on). Who thinks these things up?

More silly questions

Further to my recent post, I've been helping my elderly father-in-law manage his online bank account with the Nationwide. It asked us to choose four security questions and give answers that we then have to remember at any point in the future. What age do they assume their customers are? Does anyone over 7 years old actually have a favourite colour? How about some questions suitable for people over 50? Such as 'how much did Mars Bars used to cost?', 'what do you hate most about online banking?', or the reliable 'where were you when you heard that President Kennedy had been shot?'. But best to stay away from 'what did you come upstairs for?' or 'where are your car keys?'.

Favourite questions

Registering on a website today, I was asked to choose a security question from the following options:

Problem is:

• Don't know, and seems a bit late to ask now.
• If I pick one at random, would I pick the same one when I'm asked again. And, heck, it was 50 years ago.
• Heck, it was 50 years ago
• Heck, it was 50 years ago
• Heck, it was 200 years ago
• Which grandfather?