Identity VerificationBanks are making it very difficult to open accounts these days—something to do with money laundering they say. One of the things that they may ask for is your National Insurance Number. Don’t give it to them! According to a Direct Government webpage
The only people you should ever give your NI number to are:
- HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
- your employer
- Jobcentre Plus, if you claim Jobseeker’s Allowance
- your local council, if you claim Housing Benefit
Entitlement to many benefits depends on your National Insurance contribution record (see ‘Benefits that depend on NICs’ below) so it’s very important not to give your number to anyone else.
Another favourite idea is to put on record some significant questions and your answers so that when you telephone them they can repeat these questions back and so prove that you are who you say you are. This can be very dangerous if the answers to these questions become known (and they are not very imaginitive). The solution is to lie. They will never know if your mother’s maiden name was Smith, Jones or Robinson.
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So now the bank has tangible proof that you have lied to the bank. The lie has to be perpetuated and accurately remembered particularly as it becomes somewhat difficult to explain the seminal source of the lie (“Oh, I thought originally I’d better lie to the bank so as to beef up your security procedure but I’ve now quite forgotten what that lie was…”). Ask yourself why do you feel obliged to take on vetting your bank’s security procedures and why you are still banking with them.
When they ask you for your mother’s maiden name just tell them to hold on while you Google for it;~) If they then curtly ask you to take security seriously you can respond appropriately or change your bank to one that DOES take security procedures more seriously than your mother’s maiden name. Let’s face it Rick, anyone wanting to steal your identity is going to know your mother’s maiden name for goodness sake.
Yes, good point Robert. Perhaps I chose a bad example with Mother’s maiden name, but that one really bugs me as I am well aware that it is easy to discover.
Remembering the lie is a problem, but no worse than remembering any number of other passwords. The correct thing to do (though many security pundits don’t preach it) is to write them down. Not on a post-it on the monitor of course but in a safe place like your wallet and unidentified. In practice I have to take it a bit more seriously than that so I have them in an encrypted database on a backed-up flash drive; but then I have more passwords than the average Joe.
Given a chance I will vet anyone’s security procedures—and they are mostly rubbish. It is not their security that is at stake, it is mine.
Agreed. I have a great many [passwords] and they’re stored electronically and suitably backed up.
I think that the banks SHOULD be tasked and challenged more often to re-appraise their security procedures (ie our protection). Don’t just accept the pathetic response on the lines of “…the computer won’t accept that suggestion, so you’ll have to give us that maiden name…” rubbish.
Personally I would just take the middle road and respond to the question of mother’s maiden name or similar as being “highly insecure”;~) It’s no lie, says what I want to say and is a wake up call to the bank/shop/whatever’s internal systems monitoring procedures.