A few weeks back I made an on-line purchase – for the first time – with Tiger Direct.
When completing the purchase – a $3000+ Plasma Display for a client – I
was really surprised when I was presented with a notification that I
was going ot have to answer some questions to verify my identity!

Ok . .. so I was thinking some steps … but never would have imagined
what I was going to see. I was presented with a page that
appeared to contain an iFrame, and it suddenly filled with a set of
three multiple-choice questions. As I read the questions … I
was shocked.

• The first question had my city name – Heber City, Utah – and it
  asked me to pick which street address was in that city. It listed
  four street addresses … and sure enough one was for another property
  that I own. Uh … ok … kinda’ weird.
• The second question? This is the one that got me. It
  asked me to identify the name of someone that I know … and listed
  four names. The second name … was the married name of my
  younger sister. No way.
• The third question showed a street address … and asked me to
  identify the city that the street was in. I immediately
  recognized the street address … but could not identify which of the
  four listed cities it was in … funny … must have been an old rental
  or something.

It really was a weird experience to see that type of personal detail
… being asked on a web page. Overall, I like it … it was a
cool system and I can see where it would be very tough for someone to
gather those pieces of information. At the same time, it was
strange to see personal information gathered in such a way.

What made me think about this tonight was when a friend indicated that
he requested his annual free credit reports today. He said that
the same system was used to verify his identity to request the reports
… wild.