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No. 20: What is the password for my internet bank account?

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What is the password for my internet bank account?

First | Previous | 2015-06-10 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/pomh/?comic=20

Strip by: Ian Boreham

{A laptop sits next to a can of "Spite". The screen shows an account registration page of a web site.}

text on page:
Enter password ***** Must include at least one cyrillic character.
Reenter password ***** Timing of keystrokes must be identical.
Please select a secret question:
1. Which digit of pi is my favourite?
2. Who is the only artist better than Britney Spears?
3. When did I stop beating my wife?
4. Which dinosaur would I be, if I were a dinosaur?
5. What is my favourite glam rock song?
6. What was my most embarrassing teenage moment?
7. [question not displayed - too secret]
8. What is Victoria's Secret?

The author writes:

The widespread use of account secret questions seems to have diminished their value. (And a recent study by Google suggests that they're pretty useless anyway.) Some web sites appear to be trying to improve the security value of secret questions by making you pick from a list of questions different from the usual ones like mother's maiden name. But I've found that it can be hard to find a question in the list that I can actually provide a sensible answer for.

Presumably there are phishing web sites out there that use secret question registration to get additional information out of people (beyond the entry of a probably reused password). I'm half expecting them to become more direct in their extraction of information from the gullible and unfortunate, by asking questions like the title of this strip.

Drawn in Krita with text added in Inkscape.