Odd security question

sausage_time

I always chuckle when younger people will answer something like "five and three quarters".  They seem to transition to whole years around eight or nine years I think.

I'll prepare for that question the next time I need to call one of the companies I deal with.  I'll have the answer ready in days.  

sheramber

I know my sons’ dates of birth but do not know their ages off hand. 

Ergates

danco said:

Several times recently I have been asked a completely pointless security question by a bank (most recently by Co-Operative Bank, but not only them). It's no great issue, but I wonder why the bank asked a question that added no security whatsoever.

I was first asked my date of birth, which is a reasonable security question. And then the follow-up question was how old I would be on my next birthday!! Which, of course, can be immediately worked out from my previous answer.

That's not a pointless question at all - and unless the scammer was expecting it, it couldn't be worked out *immediately* - it would take a scammer longer to answer, and the manner in which they answer would also likely be different.

km1500

where in my case when I was asked it after giving my date of birth but not expecting to be asked my age I was completely flustered and just couldn't think how old I was!

boingy

And, of course, the scammers will soon cotton on to that question and have a prepared answer.

Sarahspangles

I would be surprised if a bank was taking into account something like hesitation on a phone call to decide if someone was genuine. Isn't it more likely that the customer service assistant is sitting with a computer screen giving them random ID questions and they are keying the answers? If the questions are random then date of birth and age might coincide randomly. 

danco

Sarahspangles said:

I would be surprised if a bank was taking into account something like hesitation on a phone call to decide if someone was genuine. Isn't it more likely that the customer service assistant is sitting with a computer screen giving them random ID questions and they are keying the answers? If the questions are random then date of birth and age might coincide randomly. 

Myself I think that's the most likely reason, but a clever instruction to the assistant would say "don't ask age if you've already asked date of birth". Maybe that's too complicated an instruction.

But I remain surprised that I've been asked those two questions more than once.

sheramber

When I dealt with checking security for incoming calls hesitation in answering was one of the things to consider, particularly post code when checking address. Postcodes weren't so commonly used then.

Telephone scammers were not common then.

badger09

sausage_time said:

I always chuckle when younger people will answer something like "five and three quarters".  They seem to transition to whole years around eight or nine years I think.

I'll prepare for that question the next time I need to call one of the companies I deal with.  I'll have the answer ready in days.  

This made me smile. If you ask parents how old their child is, they invariably say ‘he/she will be 3/4/5 etc next birthday’, rather than their current age🤔. My husband & I have adopted the same technique to explain why we can’t/didn’t/don’t want to do something. As in ‘I’ll be 75/6/7 etc next birthday’😉