Did you have to bring that up?

These days, more and more companies are developing security enhancement for their online customer accounts. Today, I logged into one of my accounts to find them wanting some new information from me. There's a certain set of questions from which I am accustomed to choosing:

- What's your pet's name?
- What's your mother's maiden name?
- What was your first telephone number?
- Where were you born?
- What's your driver's license number?
- What's your favorite color?
- Where did you go to school?

That was roughly the first set of questions I was given. I fully expected to see the same list for my second security question. To my surprise, I was given a totally different list. A list that, frankly, I didn't really like.

- What was the name of your first boyfriend/girlfriend? You know, some of us really don't want to remember the correct answer.
- In what city were you married? Yeah, can't answer that one.
- In what city were you born? Easy enough.
- in what city was your father born? Actually, I'm not sure.
- What is the first name of the best man at your wedding? Yeah, ahem, just keep rubbing it in.

Call me oversensitive but since when did companies start getting into your marital status? I know, they need to ask more unique questions other than "what's your favorite color?" to prevent hackers. How about other unique things like team mascots, favorite cities, coldest/hottest city visited, nickname your parents call you, first/current vehicle model, name of your best friend, when you were a kid what you wanted to grow up to be?

Of course, if people were really smart, they wouldn't provide the right answer and choose words that no one would ever enter as a response. And I'm not talking about putting down "none" or "1234." So maybe I should pick the last question and put down "Kermit" as my answer. ;)