Steven Jetley from Shrewsbury, England, had a falling out with Lloyds TSB bank, so he decided to have his password reflect his feelings towards the bank:
A man who chose "Lloyds is pants" as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff to "no it's not". [...]
Mr Jetley said he first realised his security password had been changed when a call centre staff member told him his code word did not match with the one on the computer.
"I thought it was actually quite a funny response," he said. "But what really incensed me was when I was told I could not change it back to 'Lloyds is pants' because they said it
was not appropriate."I asked if it was 'pants' they didn't like, and would 'Lloyds is rubbish' do? But they didn't think so.
"So I tried 'Barclays is better' and that didn't go down too well either.
"The rules seemed to change, and they told me it had to be one word, so I tried 'censorship', but they didn't like that, and then said it had to be no more than six letters long."
(Why is "pants" an objectionable word? Here's the explanation)
Pants = rubbish, no good, bag of shite
- T
www.MostEmailedNews.com
My understanding is that your banking passwords should not be wholly visible to any employee of the bank - if I ever have to use my password like this, I am asked for something like the '1st and 6th letters' of my password, which are in theory the only letters revealed to the person I am speaking to. Surely that fact that someone has seen your password AND has the facility to change it is a serious security breach?
What does concern me is the security issue. Many people use the same password on numerous accounts as it makes it easy to remember, if a bank employee can openly view your entire password it leaves them open to huge security issues. With Barclays bank (who have the worst customer service on the planet!) they can not see your full password and only ask for the 2nd and 6th letters as an example.
Perhaps you should change your password to iscrap!
but seriously, what am i missing? what is a telephone banking password? i'm not familiar. wouldn't a phone password be numbers and not letters? or am i really arguing semantics? you guys can ignore me if you'd like..
They ask you for a particular digit, perhaps, but they can see the whole thing. It's how they verify security with you, and it's why their employees are bonded.
And they have every right to dictate to you the terms of the password you use in dealing with their company. Imagine if you worked in the call centre, and were exposed to belittling and offensive comments every day just through passwords alone.
If Barclays is better, go to Barclays.