Banks (Rushing To) Add On-Line Security
I'm glad Ted wrote this timely post, Stupid Site-Key, about ING and their excessive security measures. You can tell 2006 is coming to an end because January 2007 is the deadline for banks to add extra security for on-line banking.
ETrade added keyfobs over a year ago. Kathy and I got two free keyfobs, and while it made it more difficult to access, I actually appreciate the security given that is where we store most of our investments.
HSBC added a second password that has to be "clicked" in using a little on-line keyboard. In this way, crooks cannot use a "keylogger" to capture what you are typing. I didn't mind this step so much, but then they decided last month that my passwords were not complicated enough and they quit working. There was no explanation of this until I called in and talked to a very nice person on the other end of the phone. However, the nice person had to ask me a lot of personal questions so that he was convinced I was who I said I was. I agree with Ted I don't like giving out this personal information and will start making up answers (that I can remember.) I store hints to my passwords in notepad.yahoo.com (Mom... you may want to do the same.) I store lots of things in notepad.yahoo.com. Very useful because I can get to my notes and tips from anywhere on the internet.
But what really made me mad about HSBC was that they decided to cut off automated access using Quicken. I use Quicken to go gather all transactions from my various checking, savings, credit card, and investment accounts. I will not even open an account unless it supports Quicken. However, HSBC has decided this is not secure because it relies on Intuit (Quicken) security and not their own. Now I have to log in and download a special file (qfx) to import my transactions. Still saves keying in the transactions, but it is more of a hassle.
So I went off looking to move my money to ING. But they have also turned off automatic access from Quicken. And with Ted's post, I think I'll stay away from ING and just stick with HSBC.
By the way, it is going to get stranger as you start getting asked questions like "what was the square footage of the house you owned in 1986." This happened to me recently. I had no idea, but the bank did because they were using a service that combs public records for "out of wallet" information. They call it out of wallet, because it is information you are not likely to have in your stolen wallet.
In this case, it is good to have a spouse who remembers square footages.
[Written on Dell 840c Laptop running Fedora 5 with FireFox for Linux. Used built in screenshot and GIMP graphic editor to create graphics.]
Is Yahoo Notepad safe? Seems like anybody could get to that. Should I put my passwords on it? I can never remember all of the different passwords I use. I tried using the same one for everything, but then I got a bit nervous about that because if anybody figured it out, they could get to everything I did. Not that I have very much to hide, however.
I think Jeb is saying that he doesn't store the passwords on Yahoo but has hints of which passwords he uses. I do the same thing on the Palm. I have low security, high security, long high security, and PIN numbers as passwords. When I write them down I might just write "high" so that it reminds me of which password I used. But for the SiteKey questions, I just wrote down the question and answer which isn't very secure.
McAfee has a feature called Password Vault that lets you store all of your passwords in a file that is also password protected. That might work for you even though it isn't available on the web like Yahoo.