Friday, December 19, 2008

"Helpful" authentication via RISKS

Link: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.48.html#subj14

I phoned my credit card company.

After giving my name and address, the following conversation took place:

Credit card guy: Please give me you date of birth for authentication.

Me:

Credit card guy, sounding genuinely surprised: Strange, I have a
completely different date. I have .

Me: That's my wife's date of birth.

(which is true, but he couldn't really know that, my wife hasn't got a card
with that company; I could have said that to whatever date he had given me).
This seemed to satisfy him, and we proceeded with the business I called
about.

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