American Express recently added these "3 questions" to my account, and it made me very mad. For one thing, their "request" was persistent; it eventually wouldn't let me log in until I provided them, so they were really a requirement. "For security", of course, even though there's evidence [1] they make security worse.
To make it more insulting, though, I discovered that the implementation was very dumb:
1. The questions were fixed, and extremely stupid. Any of them could probably be guessed by someone with a few minutes to Google.
2. The question lists were too short, making it difficult to pick a really hard-to-guess answer.
3. The lists were unique to each question. So if I saw 2 questions I liked in the first slot, I could choose only one of them, and if the 2nd slot had completely inane options, I had to choose one of the inane options.
4. The last question didn't even offer options that applied to me. So suddenly, for "security", I had to remember which unrelated question I selected, and which made-up response I provided. Thanks a hell of a lot, AE.
I worked with a system administrator once. He didn't understand two factor security. So he told everyone to remember two passwords.
Maybe he now works at American Express.
I see exactly the same thing with most "security improvements". Hence treat each answer as just another password! a random string of characters, numbers and punctuations.
Comments
American Express recently added these "3 questions" to my account, and it made me very mad. For one thing, their "request" was persistent; it eventually wouldn't let me log in until I provided them, so they were really a requirement. "For security", of course, even though there's evidence [1] they make security worse.
To make it more insulting, though, I discovered that the implementation was very dumb:
1. The questions were fixed, and extremely stupid. Any of them could probably be guessed by someone with a few minutes to Google.
2. The question lists were too short, making it difficult to pick a really hard-to-guess answer.
3. The lists were unique to each question. So if I saw 2 questions I liked in the first slot, I could choose only one of them, and if the 2nd slot had completely inane options, I had to choose one of the inane options.
4. The last question didn't even offer options that applied to me. So suddenly, for "security", I had to remember which unrelated question I selected, and which made-up response I provided. Thanks a hell of a lot, AE.
[1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/05/secret_questio...
I worked with a system administrator once. He didn't understand two factor security. So he told everyone to remember two passwords.
Maybe he now works at American Express.
I see exactly the same thing with most "security improvements". Hence treat each answer as just another password! a random string of characters, numbers and punctuations.