When security becomes Big Brother

I’m all for tight security where internet transactions are concerned, especially for online banking. I never mind providing details for security questions, such as my mother’s middle name, the name of my first pet or the make of my first car. Only I can answer those.

Well, actually my wife can, too, but I’m pretty sure she’s not going to con me. At least, I hope not.

And isn’t it great dreaming up the answer to a security question you know will leave a fraudster stumped?

You’ve got the virtual wagons drawn up into a circle and you know the bad guys are not going to break through. You’re in control.

Then just last week we had an incident in the Jones household which left us feeling control had passed out of our hands.

My wife was ordering something over the internet. Not a huge purchase, around £40, but one of those bank authorisation security boxes flashed up on the screen, asking for answers to questions we had never authorised or provided the answers to.

One went like this: Which of these people also live in your household – Fred, Robert, James, Gary or William. Or no one by that name?

“It’s a scam,” I said. “Never seen anything like that before. We’ve never provided that kind of information.”

So my wife cancelled the order and started again. The same box flashed up one more. A call to our bank quickly followed.

“Yes, it’s genuine,” came the response. “We buy in information from all sorts of places, such as Experian (a credit ratings agency) and the Register of Electors to create additional questions. This was just a routine check.”

“But we’ve never supplied these details and feel extremely unhappy about being asked questions created without our knowledge and supplied by an outside agency.”

Then, the hoary old excuse about it being “in our own interests” was trotted out. Not good enough. I find the idea of security questions being dreamed up behind our back and thrust in front of us with no prior warning really objectionable.

I want to be in control of my own internet security, not some nameless individual devising personal questions without our knowledge to try and catch us out. That’s not internet security, that’s Big Brother.

And I don’t mean that rubbish reality TV show. Matthew Hoare, centre, aged 21, with his sister Jenna, 19, and brother Daniel, 23; Matthew died after a tyre exploded in 2006