Identity verification nonsense

Boyd

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Staff member
Site Administrator
Jul 31, 2004
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Ben's Branch, Stephen Creek
Have run into this twice during the past week, once on my bank's website and the other time at my insurance company. Now, I am completely in favor of confirming my identity when performing an online transaction. But both of these institutions are using the same service that evidently scoops up personal information about your financial history.

The way this works, you take a "quiz" with multiple choice questions. And the questions are ridiculous. Three of them were about cars that I owned in the 1980's! Maybe I'm weird, but I'm not especially into cars and don't remember all the details about my rides over 30 years ago. Another question was the name of the seller and the purchase price of a home that I bought in 2002. Was digging through my files to find that. Out of more than half a dozen questions, the only one I could answer with certainty was the name of a company I worked for almost 10 years ago. Geez, if you're going to ask those kinds of questions, at least stick to the past 10 years. :argh:

I just couldn't pass the "quiz" at the insurance company and had to call support. They were very nice, asked a few easy questions, sent me a text message and I was all set. I lucked out at the bank and somehow managed to pass their quiz, but I was just guessing on two of the four questions. Has anyone else experienced this ridiculous system?
 

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
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8,180
For the first time ever I was questioned by my bank this week while trying to make a transfer. However, they just did the text thing and I was good.
 
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Boyd

Administrator
Staff member
Site Administrator
Jul 31, 2004
9,504
2,766
Ben's Branch, Stephen Creek
I did a transfer into the same account last week and had to authenticate via text message. Today I was transferring a much smaller amount out of this bank and had to take the "quiz".
 

lj762

Explorer
Feb 18, 2017
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227
Bass River State Forest
If you are interested, "the quiz" is called Knowledge-Based Authentication or KBA. Also know as "out-of-wallet" questions, because the idea is that if someone steals your wallet, they still won't be able to answer the questions. That's the theory. In practice, it varies from useless to silly. One credit reporting agency gives me 4 questions that seem totally random, and the answer is always "none of the above". Then they say they can't authenticate me (of course not) and want a written request etc.

Unfortunately, this type of KBA is the probably the best and only thing they have now for online verification of identity.
 
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