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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but I dare you give out your account number to a random person. The bank security system here is ridiculous. I always stick to cashier's check for this very reason (and for accounting purpose).
But that's what people did, back in the day when they wrote checks to pay for things in store.
[1] https://www.rabobank.com/en/press/search/2018/20180523-ibann...
At least this is explainable by designers not anticipating hard cases. I remember the shittiest app from HSBC (who, by the way, seem to be sleepwalking their way through retail banking, with no direction from anyone who cares), which asked: "What is the answer to your chosen secret question?"
They rightly thought that showing the question could give away the answer, and thus decided to make that secret.
It sounds like a good idea, until I found out that the correct answers are considered to be incorrect by their system. I'm sorry, but I know where my mother lives, and she has lived there for decades. You got your data wrong, that's not my fault. When I answer the question correctly, it therefore locks me out of my account entirely, and I have to call Citibank to get my account unlocked. Helpfully, when you get locked out of your own Citibank account, anytime you try to log in the website delivers a plain-text "HTTP 403 Error" without any explanation. I had to deduce myself that it was because I "incorrectly" answered the question about me correctly.
I asked Citibank's customer service how to resolve this. I was eventually routed all the way to the top of their organization. Their best answer was that I should file a request with LexisNexis, the huge corporation that aggregates these data records on people using automated tools, to have the "official" answers changed.
That made me laugh. They want to place that burden on me?
So now I just do the whole dance every time I need to add a bill payee. Answer their questions correctly, get locked out because they think it's incorrect, then call customer service to get my account unlocked and to add the payee manually.
Does anyone know a good alternative bank?
At least this is explainable by designers not anticipating hard cases. I remember the shittiest app from HSBC (who, by the way, seem to be sleepwalking their way through retail banking, with no direction from anyone who cares), which asked: "What is the answer to your chosen secret question?"
They also sent out a free RSA token for logins when they deprecated this system. It was first sent to "privilege banking" customers like me. And then they forgot that they sent them out, and tried to get me to pay for a new one. They were insistent that the token wasn't sent out at all. Ended up cancelling that credit card.
At least this is explainable by designers not anticipating hard cases. I remember the shittiest app from HSBC (who, by the way, seem to be sleepwalking their way through retail banking, with no direction from anyone who cares), which asked: "What is the answer to your chosen secret question?"
It's dumbfounding how awful bank websites are at security. They started with the stupidest conceivable way to implement two-factor--a second clear-text password that is an answer to a very small number of secret questions. Then they limited the secret questions to things people could find out about you on Facebook, then on top of that added secret questions about esoteric crap like your father's mother's childhood ne…
At least this is explainable by designers not anticipating hard cases. I remember the shittiest app from HSBC (who, by the way, seem to be sleepwalking their way through retail banking, with no direction from anyone who cares), which asked: "What is the answer to your chosen secret question?"
I remember that in a similar case I generated a random string with my password manager but I don't remember for which account. I hope it was one for I'll never have to spell that on a phone.
Hmm, although it sounds like this was intended to prevent fraud, to me it almost sounds like it was intended to prevent accidental missends, like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729875 > “I lost my inheritance with one wrong digit on my sort code”
So the main user of that feature is the bank, not the bank customers.
It's never wrong to review that famous and ever-relevant essay, Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names , and for which there has been oodles of prior discussion on this forum: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12450825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492464 Original at https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
Singapore has this figured out, it's not THAT hard, especially when you have a solid national identity / SSO design . You can use phone number or national ID number to register and that's all that is needed but you can set a display name freely if you don't want your name to leak via reverse lookup. Generating QR also is available right in app and accepted pretty much universal via the same app you can check in for c…