For My own Protection
Casual For My Own Protection I'm a reasonable man, and I take reasonable precautions to secure my property. This means keeping a lock on all the doors of my house, hiding the spare key somewhere...
...God forbid they should pay off this month's balance for me...
...As far as that goes, what's the worst thing that would happen if someone were to break into my online credit card statements...
...My answer: I don't have one...
...As I say, I'm a reasonable man...
...No dice...
...Or how about this: "What's the name of your first pet...
...If I absent-mindedly walked away without logging off, a good password system would keep my fellow investors from emptying the account and using the purloined funds to buy a swizzle stick at Starbucks...
...Every month they come up with a new security scheme...
...One of my brokerage accounts is slightly embarrassing: It has a total value of 12 cents ($0.12) that it has maintained for the last three or four years—the residual value of 126 shares of stock in one of those bankrupt Internet high-flyers...
...And when the bulls are running, it has been known to climb as high as 12 and a half cents...
...I don't have one of those, either...
...The answers are Underdog, Mrs...
...Richard Starr...
...When it comes to my virtual property on the Internet, I would be delighted to take a similarly relaxed approach, if only I could...
...What is your favorite cartoon character...
...Not that there's anything wrong with those who err on the side of vigilance: On how to strike a proper balance in these things reasonable men may differ...
...It's not as if my mother's maiden name has recently been in the news...
...One of my goals in life is to have no electronic secrets worth cracking...
...You know, if the Bush administration had contracted out the war on terror to Citibank's credit-card security consultants, the New York Times would never, ever have figured out what was going on...
...Now when I need to access my credit card records, I'll at least have this permanent, printed record of the passwords to refer back to...
...After all, what if I were to hang out at one of the public library computers, day-trading online alongside all the homeless men...
...No matter: My mother's maiden name is no longer good enough for Citibank...
...I finally settled on the only three questions that had non-ambiguous answers...
...But what explains all the other websites now making deeply unreasonable password demands...
...It would make a neat story to say that I keep this account open as a stern reminder to myself that there's a reason I work in Washington and not on Wall Street...
...Believe me, I've tried all my favorites—"password," "password1" (in case they required a number), "pss-wrd" (in case there was a limit of six characters), not to mention my really clever ones that no one will ever guess, "Starr1" and "Starr2...
...My email archives are an open book—a tedious, incomprehensibly boring book, in fact, and nothing that would cause me to lose a minute of sleep were an antagonist to steal my laptop and hand it over to Matt Drudge...
...What is your oldest sibling's nickname...
...And I'm not about to spend 30 minutes navigating the brokerage firm's voice-mail labyrinth to obtain a new one...
...Well, that would be the turtle we wrapped in Kleenex, put into a metal Band-Aid box, and buried in the back yard with a full color-guard/casket detail...
...My financial accounts are similarly, monotonously dull...
...Carney, and Bill...
...I don't go for multiple locks and chains on the front door, fancy electronic alarms, or grabbing the .12-gauge for a stroll around the neighborhood whenever the dog's ear twitches...
...I can understand that a brokerage firm wants to take precautions...
...And no, I don't remember the turtle's name...
...My memory is fine, by the way...
...It's the passwords that got complicated...
...They insist that I also make up answers to three password challenge questions chosen from their list...
...Alas, I find myself forgetting more and more passwords these days...
...This means keeping a lock on all the doors of my house, hiding the spare key somewhere other than under the doormat, and peeking out through the Venetian blinds to see what's stirring when the dog barks in the middle of the night...
...Here's another: "What is your best friend's name...
...Truth is, I can't remember the security password to liquidate the thing...
...My favorite password, when I can get away with it, is "password...
...What was the last name of your first grade teacher...
...Some days, when the market tanks, it subsides to 11.9 cents...
...And that's not the worst of it: They seem to have convened a focus group of 10-year-olds to come up with the questions...
...Those are for my benefit, not yours...
...My credit card company must think the CIA is after me...
...Here's one of their possible challenges: "What's your favorite color...
Vol. 12 • February 2007 • No. 21
