I just tried to sign up for a UPS account and the questions they ask are scary | Hacker News Reader

I just tried to sign up for a UPS account and the questions they ask are scary

4 pointsxlaacid4 comments

I was trying to sing up for a UPS My Choice premium account from Techbargains. They asked me to verify myself through some security qusetions; IS THIS THE HOUSE NUMBER YOU SHARED WITH X?, IS THIS WHEN YOUR HUSBAND WAS BORN?, HAVE YOU NEVER LIVED IN ONE OF THESE CITIES? The scary thing was that the answer to these questions were more than 20 yrs old in some cases. They have some deep data. I would be scared.

View on HN

I suspect that this is not actually UPS asking these questions. I believe that this is a third party identity verification service that uses publicly available information to confirm that you are who you say you are. My credit union does something similar, instead of security questions, whenever I log in from a new, never before used, IP address.

How would you suggest that they verify that you are who you say they are?

If they didn't have some form of verification, anyone could sign up for an account saying they were you, and cancel or redirect any packages going to your home.

As another comment has explained, this is a third party verification service; they use public records and credit report information to verify your identity. Fedex does the same thing.

That's a service of one of the big credit reporting companies - Experian I think, or maybe Equifax. Heck, maybe both. UPS doesn't know this data about you, the verification service pulls it from your credit file to determine if you are who you way you are, since the data is more historical (and more personal) than common password identification type questions.

This is why I keep saying that privacy advocates worry too much about the government (which is heavily constrained by law) and not nearly neough about the private sector. Some of the big data brokerages like Acxiom really do seem to know more about consumers than they do themselves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com