I just logged on to check my student loan at the Sallie Mae website. They have a new "feature" - challenge questions... to "safeguard your account information". Not that unusual... except that you are required to enter five of them. Here's the choices:

• Favorite author
• Name of the street your favorite residence is on
• Greatest fear
• Favorite relative
• Best friend from childhood
• Favorite teacher
• Favorite vacation spot
• First job
• Grandmother's maiden name
• Favorite musician
• First pet
• Make/Model of first car
• Mother's middle name
• City where you were born
• Name of first school

And most of these would STILL be available to someone who already knew my name/address/phone number. Not to mention - do I want Sallie Mae having that much information about me? I think I'll just answer as if I were a fictional character....

• Greatest fear...... My wife dying
• Best friend from childhood..... Kitster
• Favorite teacher..... Ben
• Favorite vacation spot..... Varykino
• First job.... Slave
• Favorite musician..... Figrin D'an
• First pet.... 3PO
• Make/Model of first car.... Radon-Ulzer 620C
• City where you were born.... Mos Espa
• Name of first school.... Jedi Temple

Now all we need is your real account information and we can...pay off your student loans.  Oh wait, that's not right.

bugmenot1:

Now all we need is your real account information and we can...pay off your student loans.  Oh wait, that's not right.

That's a whole new kind of crime: Identity antitheft. You abuse someone's personal information to do them good, like paying off their loans without their knowledge. That's almost as bad a crime as corporate anti-espionage (where a corporation pays someone to smuggle informations about their secret new product into the system of a rival corp) or hit-and-transport-to-the-hospital.

This appears to be a growing trend in Wish-It-Was Two-Factor. The last one posted was from, I think, Nationwide (UK Financial institution.)

I see no mention of your favourite candy or where your wedding rehersal dinner was held however.

It appears they've re-invented the wheel by coming up with their own questions.
 

PJH:

I see no mention of your favourite candy or where your wedding rehersal dinner was held however.

It appears they've re-invented the wheel by coming up with their own questions.

Either that or they bought a 'stupid questions for bamking sites' package off someone. The questions are different, apart from the ones you mention, which obviously wouldn't be used in the UK.

I can translate candy but WTF is a 'wedding rehersal dinner'. Why would you need to practice eating?
 

"Greatest fear"... that kind of reminds me of that Family Guy episode: "has anyone seen my son Chris Griffin? I have a photo of him here. In fact, you can just go ahead and keep that because he messed it up by writing his name, address and a list of his phobias on the back".

Of course, I don't think they would have enough space for my greatest fear (that mice and spiders will cross-breed to form an all-powerful race of mice-spiders who will immobilise human beings in giant webs in order to steal cheese.)
 

Cthulhu reencoded:

PJH:

I see no mention of your favourite candy or where your wedding rehersal dinner was held however.

It appears they've re-invented the wheel by coming up with their own questions.

Either that or they bought a 'stupid questions for banking sites' package off someone. The questions are different, apart from the ones you mention, which obviously wouldn't be used in the UK.

I can translate candy but WTF is a 'wedding rehersal dinner'. Why would you need to practice eating?
 

Pass. It's off the screenshot I linked to else-thread.

In fact I tried to log onto my Nationwide account to see if I could get the dropdowns they actually used, and I cannot find anywhere on the site to change them.

---

Ah - found out why. Cue another possible TRWTF: http://www.nationwide.co.uk/security/smart/faq.htm#q3 :

Can I change the answers to my additional security questions?
No, unlike the memorable data and passnumber you are not able to change the answers to your additional security questions once you have enrolled. However, if you think that someone else knows the answer to your questions or you have forgotten the answers you should contact us on 08457 30 20 10.

I assume this also applies to actually changing *which* security questions you are asked.

It's all a load of bollocks anyway, as I pointed out in detail to Nationwide after I had to fill in their idiotic form with the 5 of 20 questions. Predictably I received no reply off them, and I even heard on the TV some rep. of theirs saying they'd had only 5 complaints about the system. I know of at least 10 people who'd complained up to the evening before that interview.

They don't listen. Not that this surprises me.

Cthulhu reencoded:

I can translate candy but WTF is a 'wedding rehersal dinner'. Why would you need to practice eating?

Yeah you'd think Americans wouldn't need any more practice.

</american-bashing-again reason="because it's so damn easy">
 

ChZEROHag:

Cthulhu reencoded:

I can translate candy but WTF is a 'wedding rehersal dinner'. Why would you need to practice eating?

Yeah you'd think Americans wouldn't need any more practice.

</american-bashing-again reason="because it's so damn easy">
 

Heh, for a second I thought you meant Americans practicing getting married. That's almost as true as eating. :D 

ChZEROHag:

Cthulhu reencoded:

I can translate candy but WTF is a 'wedding rehersal dinner'. Why would you need to practice eating?

Yeah you'd think Americans wouldn't need any more practice.

</american-bashing-again reason="because it's so damn easy">
 

I guess this isn't done in other countries.  The day before my wedding, we "rehearsed" the steps and words and walking and stuff that we would do in the actual wedding, then we all went out to eat.  That's the rehearsal dinner:  dinner following the rehearsal.  I liked it, because it had fewer people than the wedding reception, and I knew everyone at the dinner, where I didn't know everyone at the reception.   

j6cubic:

bugmenot1:

Now all we need is your real account information and we can...pay off your student loans.  Oh wait, that's not right.

That's a whole new kind of crime: Identity antitheft.

 

not really new... anticrime was invented long before by Terry Pratchett

 

see: http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Anticrime 

Krenn:

I just logged on to check my student loan at the Sallie Mae website.

I too had to put up with this. On top of that, when I went to login today, I found they had changed their login form again - rendering opera's wand password nonfunctional leading me to cuss out the damn site while bashing my head in to try to remember my damn password - and apparently opera doesn't let you just read the passwords out of the wand db like firefox will >:( (you have to pull some trick of triggering wand, then stop the page load, then do some javascript to turn the password box into a normal one, which you can't do if the f*king login form changes and thus you can't get wand to activate in the first place).

belgariontheking:

I guess this isn't done in other countries.  The day before my wedding, we "rehearsed" the steps and words and walking and stuff that we would do in the actual wedding, then we all went out to eat.

I wasn't being entirely serious but big weddings are largely out of style here. I wouldn't like to guess what percentage of people have a wedding rehearsal, let alone a dinner afterwards.

 I can see if you were going for a big wedding, a less formal family dinner beforehand might be a welcome break. Never having been to a wedding rehearsal, the only thing that comes to mind is "Kill Bill". I guess that's not entirely typical.
 

Cthulhu reencoded:

Never having been to a wedding rehearsal, the only thing that comes to mind is "Kill Bill". I guess that's not entirely typical.

You would guess wrong.  There is at least one murder at every American wedding rehearsal.  That's part of why they're so popular here.  Everyone wants to know who's going to be whacked.

Quicksilver:

not really new... anticrime was invented long before by Terry Pratchett

 

see: http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Anticrime 

Of course it was. Doesn't change that fact that Pratchett didn't predict identity antitheft, which is fairly new (and even more WTFy than unsolicited renovation).

ChZEROHag:

</american-bashing-again reason="because it's so damn easy">

Careful. Your jealousy is showing. 

I've thought that as a musician it would be fun to make and shrinkwrap CDs, photocopy a barcode from a FYE or whatever MusicBigBox CD, stick it on mine, and sneak them INTO CD stores. People would end up buying them accidentally, and then listen to my music.

ChZEROHag:

Cthulhu reencoded:

I can translate candy but WTF is a 'wedding rehersal dinner'. Why would you need to practice eating?

Yeah you'd think Americans wouldn't need any more practice.

</american-bashing-again reason="because it's so damn easy">
 

I'll take digging up and beating an already dead and buried horse for $800. :-D

I like the wikipedia entry on the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehearsal_dinner, specifically:

A rehearsal dinner is a pre-wedding ceremony in North American tradition

When else are you going to do it?  I don't know about you, but I am more happy when the rehearsal dinner occurs after the wedding.