BioBooksAwardsComing NextContactBlogFun StuffHome

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

This Just Happened

Back in March, I blogged about the ridiculous security questions websites/companies ask to confirm your identity. And recently I had the point driven home forcefully.

My power flickered on and off for a split second after I got home from work. It was enough to knock out the internet and the telephone. I unplugged the box and plugged it back in again. Nothing. Tried that again. Nope. There's a white box in the laundry room. I tried rebooting that. Still nothing.

I decided to sit and wait for my neighbors to call it in, but then I started worrying that maybe they weren't having problems since it was that brief power dip that caused this. I hesitated a little longer, but I was supposed to work from home the following day and I had to have internet. I gathered up all the courage my little introverted heart had and called my provider. Thank goodness my new house has cell phone coverage because my old house had zero bars.

After managing to get through the automated question process, I finally talked to a human. Who asked me what my four-digit security code was. Gah! I didn't even remember having a code, let alone what the numbers were. She gave me a few guesses and then suggested I go with my security question.

Okay, yeah, that's good. Thinking it was one of the questions I'd actually be able to answer. I wasn't that lucky. The question was: Who's your favorite actor?

Cue scream here. OMG! I don't have a favorite actor. I think I mentioned that in my blog post that I linked to in the first paragraph. I tried Johnny Depp, but that wasn't right. She offered me another guess and I was like, you could give me a thousand guesses and I might never come up with the right name. She then went back to the four-digit number. I made guesses and somehow hit the right one.

I was like are you seriously not going to fix my internet because I can't remember a number from six months ago? But apparently it simply had to do with remotely connecting to the modem or something like that.

This totally drove home how asinine the security measures taken by these companies actually is. Favorite actor? Really? even if I was into Hollywood and celebrity, that could change depending on the last movie or TV series that I'd seen. Sooo frustrating! There has to be a better way.

And in case you were wondering, a circuit breaker had popped that hit the laundry room and the mysterious white box. Once I reset it and rebooted the box, everything worked again.