[dexterdog]

I always fill all social engineering-vulnerable questions with nonsense, especially when it is a banking site. I like when they let you set the question yourself so you can put something like "Why would a secure financial institution allow such a horrible security hole in it's system?" To which the answer is Tyrolese4Tokyo_Beulah!Papuan.

[zifnab06]

I fill them with nonsense words unrelated to the question. Mother's maiden name? Fire truck. First car? Air conditioner.

If I have to call a company they always ask me why. The explanation is anyone who has me as a Facebook friend can figure out who my first girlfriend was, my maternal grandmother's first name, my mother's maiden name, where I was born, my first car, etc. And if every company has the same data, a data breach at one makes the entire system fall apart.

[beagle3]

Same here. But recently, United airlines changed their system to only allow selecting from a list (your favorite dog breed ? Choose 1 of 8. Your favorite movie genre? Choose one of 12). I picked a random set and wrote it in my password stash.

Seriously bad security practices.

[vacri]

And the answer is "because, by and large, it works just fine". Yes, people fall afoul of these kinds of questions, but the general public cannot handle proper security hygeine - and educating them takes so much effort on both sides, that your customers will just go elsewhere. Proper security procedures would also lock a great many more people out of their own accounts than would be lost to fraud. Can't satisfy security questions? Well, take the morning off work on Monday morning and bring in several forms of identification...

It's why ATM PIN codes are so short - it's easier for the bank to just reimburse losses in case of fraud than to properly/strictly control security access.

Any time I see someone talk about how dumb general banking security procedures are, it tells me that they've spent no time in tech support for the general public :)

[M_Grey]

Exactly, it's just another opportunity to password protect things.