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Personalization and dumb security questions

Posted by: Stephen Baker on November 19

David Weinberger and danah boyd complain about stupid security questions. Most of the security programs, it seems to me, assume that the person hacking your data doesn’t know you. This may be true most of the time. But a vengeful cousin is bound to know your street, elementary school, mother’s middle name, etc.

Speaking of knowing us, why in this age of personalization do banks, which have more data on us than practically anyone else, insist on asking us at the ATMs if we speaking English or Spanish? Should we find it reassuring that even after asking the question 500 times, they still don’t know?

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In Blogspotting Senior Writer Stephen Baker and Associate Editor Heather Green take a look at how cutting-edge technologies are changing business and society. Whether its blogs or wikis, data crunching or data targeting, technology’s advances are reshaping the world that we live in.

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