The problem with security questions on PayPal

The problem with security questions on PayPal is that they are made for people much younger than I am. They want you to remember what your first pet’s name was and other things no one past 16 can remember. They ask who your favorite teacher was. I had several that I liked, but no favorite. They ask things that I just have no answer for, so I end up just filling something in like “suck”, “idontknow”, or “blowme” just so I can get into my account. It doesn’t make anything more secure. It just locks me out of my account so I have to call them. They could avoid this by making the security question either optional or letting the user fill in their own security question. I can remember who my favorite band is. It’s been the same for well over a decade and I don’t see it changing. I can remember what my favorite whiskey is, my favorite vodka, my favorite president, my favorite Linux distro, and tons of other things. So let the user write their own security question or it kind of defeats the purpose. You might as well make it a “Facebook Connect” situation so that a hacker can get into everything with just one password.

I know this is a really short blog post, but this is all I have to say on the matter. Plus it is too long for a Twitter message. So it had to go here.