(no subject)

[alchemia]

Great.  My credit card is requiring that I come up with 3 answers to security questions.   There's like 20 options, but they are all TERRIBLE!  They are things like ....

• "What was your favourite sport to play in highschool?"  (I had medicals out of gym/sports)
• multiple versions of this.... "What's the name of your eldest/youngest son's/daughter's best friend?"  (Like no doubt plenty of other clients, i have no children)
• multiple versions of this...."What's the name of your eldest/youngest brother's/sister's best friend?) (Like no doubt some other clients, I'm an only child)
• "What year did you graduate college?" (I'm sure I'm not the only client to not have gone to or graduated from college)
• "What was your most memorable promotion?"  (being on disability since childhood, I've never worked, let alone had a promotion)
• multiple versions of this...."What was the name of the bestman/maid of honour/flower girl/ring bearer at your wedding?"  (I'm sure I'm not the only client to have never had a wedding (yes, "married" to bug forever, but not "legally" to our gov't, and never did a ceremony))
• What is the name of your father's boss?  (How the hell would I know?  He died when I was a kid.) (Note, they don't ask about your mother's boss, (not that that would help me since she doesn't work either, but a bit sexist!)

There's NOTHING asking about books/movies or pets, which is what I usually do for these question requirements. 

How the hell am I supposed to answer any of these!???

Comments

[herlander_refugee]

Perhaps base all the answers on the life of a favorite character in a favorite book!

[alchemia]

Hm, thats a good idea.
probably would make phone calls with them amusing too

[herlander_refugee]

No doubt!

[rainbow]

i have a file just for security questions (my computer is secure; besides me only p has access), so when there are useless questions, i make soemthing up and save it in the file.

[amberfox]

I once told a security question that I grew up in New Zealand because it demanded a 6+ character answer and I'm from Plano, Texas. 5 characters each. sigh...

[krait]

*giggles* Wow, that is kind of unfortunate! Texas, why do you have to be so short? :D

Did you try/consider "PlanoTX" ?

[alchemia]

i tried that, but I keep loosing my files (on the computer, or on paper). I have to be able to make mnemonics to remember this stuff in my head

[rainbow]

i have a poor memory due to tbi issues, so memorising hasn't been an option for me. luckily eudora (my email program) makes it easy to make mailboxes, so i have one called "passwords and logins" and i make the subject line the name of the site.

i even back it up every so often (but not often enough; i should really do it more than *cough* every couple years...)

[elf]

Decide that for security question purposes, your "child" is either Snape or Harry. Or that you are--answer questions as if they were about the character. That way you don't have to keep a file to remember the questions, just remember who "you" are. (I suggest not Harry, in that case, because that's probably a bit predictable. I suspect a lot of people put "quidditch" as their favorite sport.)

My favorite sport in high school was Dungeons & Dragons. I don't care if there were no varsity teams; *I* considered it a sporting event.

I have a "favorite sports team" (another common security question) grabbed from a movie.

[alchemia]

I think I'm going to go with the fictional character idea :-)

[torachan]

Wow, what horrible questions! I do come across a lot of bad ones, but usually there are a few I can do (though there have been times where if it required you to choose three questions and there were, say ten to choose from, I was able to get just three, but the rest would have been impossible). I realise it must be difficult to pick questions that could be applicable to everyone, but a lot of them seem way too exclusive. Even making the graduation question be high school graduation rather than college would open it up to a much wider pool of people, even if there would still be some it would be impossible for.

[krait]

Wow, that is a worse selection than usual!

I always end up picking whichever one mentions pets, or whichever one asks for a birthplace. Then I only have to remember the sub-rules: 1. "Favourite" means "current"; 2. All answers are one word, first letter caps.

When faced with extremely limited selections, "kid" means "pet". :D

Could you do something similar, i.e. institute a rule that the answer to any 'wedding' question is always going to be BUGLAND (or any offspring question will have the answer [DOG'S NAME]; etc.)? Or drop the middleman and answer any human-relationship question with YOUR best friend rather than your nonexistent kid/sibling's best friend?

The trick of course is to remember in some fashion that you're redefining the question; otherwise you're hopelessly lost if you don't log in for a month. (This is why I had to make general guidelines and remember just those two things, rather than try to memorise each question's answer on each site I use.)