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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

> confirmed identity by asking knowledge based questions

I'm not sure I feel good about this either. Isn't your mother's maiden name, the street you grew up on, your first concert, or your pet's name all information that is pretty much well known by now. Primarily by you (royal) for taking those stupid social media quizzes.

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I actually prefer this over the other currently available options (Install our app on your phone so you can click "Accept" ... and give us access to scrape everything off of your smartphone!). I just select random questions from their list, and use the same answer for each of the questions. If they don't accept the same answer for each question, then I conclude I don't need whatever it is they're offering as badly as they think I need it, and move on to another entity or form of communication (if you won't make this convenient for me, then fine -- you can send me snail mail correspondence).

I used my password manager to fill in those questions with passwords, but that proved difficult when I had to provide the answer to the question over the phone to some rep.

> ... and give us access to scrape everything off of your smartphone!

Deny them the access? Phones are way more restricted than home computers here. App stores also reject apps that insist on permissions that are out of their scope.

  App stores also reject apps that insist on permissions that are out of their scope.

Only for smaller apps.

There are major apps that have unique integrations with app stores and consumer devices. Phone security/privacy is largely PR in this regard.

The funniest part about these is that if someone has stolen your identity and successfully gotten things added to your credit report then you may actually FAIL to answer correctly questions about yourself.

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