Thursday, November 22, 2007

Online security

Mrs. Lear is somewhat exercised about the new security procedures she has to go through for her online banking.
Quite apart from mother's maiden name, post code and other stuff like that, there are now subjective questions.
The one most vexing her is " What is your favourite colour?"
Now this will show you Mrs. Lear's excellence. A bloke ( ok me) would say " Blue"
" But" said Mrs.Lear to me last night " how do you know it will still be blue in two or three months time?"
Now I had never thought about this. My favourite colour is blue. It always has been. I'm a boy - it's blue. It always will be.
But Mrs. Lear makes the valid point that if a woman's favourite colour never changed, there would be no fashion industry, and we would never have had the endless avocado bathroom suites all those years ago.
There would be no autumn colours for ladies to adopt, or spring, or summer.
So I suggested that she could put in whatever the present colour was and thereafter change it when the mood took her.
Except there wasn't a way of doing that on the form. You could change addresses, phone numbers and all sorts of stuff - but not your favourite colour.
" So how am I supposed to remember my favourite colour?" I suggested she put it in her mobile phone under Coulour ( last name) Other Colour ( first name) and then a fictitious number.
"I'll just write it down" Which she did.
Unfortunately, the next question was " Favourite book". Sigh.
It's going to take a very long time to fill in this form I can see.

1 comment:

Whispering Walls said...

Mrs Lear makes a good point. One of the security questions at my bank is "What's your favourite place?" and I can never remember what it is.