Security Schmacurity

Last night I went online to pay my credit card bill, only to be confronted with some new screen that mandated I fill in a variety of new security questions to make my identity even more secure. I don't know about any of you, but I often have serious trouble choosing security questions from the defined list of questions, and then an even harder time answering them.

My first problem is that a lot of the questions don't even apply to me. "What was your son's first word?" "What is your spouse's nickname?" "Where did you go on your honeymoon?" "What was your younger brother's nickname as a child?" "What is your favorite flavor of Ensure?" Right off the bat, I can't even choose a third of the available questions. There are a lot of people out there who don't have kids or who aren't married or have no siblings. I am obviously one of them. This poses a problem.

Secondly, a lot of the questions are open to interpretation, and I don't have defined answers. "What is your most unique characteristic?" "What is the last name of the most famous person you've ever met?" "In 500 words or less, what is your opinion on Scientology?" The first two questions were actual security question options! Even the apparently simple ones like "What is your favorite song?" are tough for me to handle. I don't have ONE favorite song. If you force me to name one, it probably won't still be my favorite song when I have an account problem later. Dammit, new songs come out all the time! How the hell am I supposed to know? I haven't even heard all of the songs on Danity Kane's album yet! And don't even get me started on the "unique characteristic" question. If you can answer that question succinctly, maybe we should consider not being friends anymore.

Finally, they have all these semi-abstract questions that are easy to answer, but extremely hard to remember. "If you could control your height, how tall would you be?" "If you needed a new first name, what would it be?" I actually sometimes ask people in real life what they would change their names to if they could. Now I can't really have that discussion anymore because it's just too risky.

My absolute favorite option was "Who was your arch rival when you were growing up?" While this provided a good 5 minutes of fun as I pondered who my arch rival would be if I had to designate one, it was totally impractical for a security question. Ultimately, I had to choose three different security questions. I am not confident I will remember the answer to a single one. So please do not steal my identity. If you do, I am sure to have a very difficult time with customer service, and I would prefer not to go through the extra hassle.