You Call Those Security Questions?

By Ryan Majeau | Posted in my blog for

lost walletDespite a 6 year streak of not losing my wallet, the ongoing craziness of 2013 has put that one to rest. Luckily there was no money in it (who has money in their wallets these days?), my debt you can have! As I’ve gone through the motions this week replacing things and adding credit alerts, I’m noting one scary trend. What’s up with the lack of secure “security questions”?!

This isn’t 2005. There’s this thing called social media now. Perhaps you’ve heard of Facebook? I can’t see how a person’s birthday and address is any sort of top secret info that only they would know. Thanks to the internet, you’d be surprised what can be found out about you online. Trust me, it’s a lot more than just your birthday and address.

Even calling Equifax (which by the way is completely useless on a weekend) had me run through a series of questions in order to get the alert placed on my file. This is Equifax we’re talking about. You’d think they’d have some crazy questions that would make me think for a minute. I was actually worried before I started. Nope. Address, date of birth, phone number… Um, hello—I lost my wallet. That means all of that info is in there. Where are the skill testing questions?? Any of my friends could answer those.

Drivers licence, credit cards and bank cards are easy to replace. Other than having the bank teller tell me how drastically larger my face is now versus my 5 year old passport photo, it’s all be relatively painless. I’m not happy the online banking system only allows up to 8 characters of letters or numbers—no special characters. How strong of a password can you make with that?!

If anything having this alert on my credit file (for 6 years!) will mean more info will be needed if any credit is applied for. Go ahead, yes please – ask me more than what my address and birthdate is!

Maybe it was a good thing I lost the damn thing. I needed a new one anyways. This also just makes my desire for a digital wallet on my iPhone. Google did it. Apple, get on that!