It’s been ages since I’ve had to pick a “Security Question” on a website account.  I thought maybe that practice had finally gone the way of the corded telephone.

Nope!  It’s still around.  And even stupider than before.

I had occasion today to log into my account for Sunpass.  (Actually I needed to know the car’s plate number and it was easier to look it up on Sunpass than walk downstairs to the garage.)

Sunpass, for those who don’t know, is the highway toll system in Florida that very conveniently works NOWHERE ELSE.

Before I could get to my account, the recently revamped Sunpass website informed me I would have to choose and answer three “security questions.”

Screen grab from the Sunpass website.

I scanned the questions quickly, looking of course for “mother’s maiden name,”  “first pet,”  “town you were born in,” and the like.  You know…common rememberable things for which the answer just springs to mind, almost without effort.

Nope!  None of those!  As I looked down the list all I could think of was that I’d happened upon a Mad Magazine parody, or Saturday Night Live skit,  of “security questions.”  Just try reading through them slowly and thoughtfully without chuckling a bit.

If I can’t even come up with the answer to a question right now, quickly and easily, how in the hell am I going to remember it the next time I log in?

And I can’t remember ever reading of someone hacking a Sunpass account.  The only time Sunpass ever had a major computer SNAFU was when it just screwed up royally all by itself, without any help from hackers.  It went on for months and took them years to recover.

Let’s be honest, a Sunpass account isn’t of quite the importance, security-wise, as, say, my credit card account, which I can get into with my mom’s maiden name and where I was born.

So I went down the list.  “Who was your childhood hero?” was the ONLY one for which an answer sprang quickly to mind: “Superman.”

So I chose the childhood hero question three times and answered it with Superman all three times and hit “Submit.”

DING DING DING.  Can’t do that!  Can’t duplicate the questions!  Back to the drawing board.

I put my first choice again as the childhood hero question, with Superman as the answer.  For my second choice I put the “learned to cook” question with “Superman” as the answer.  For my third one I put the “first film” question in, and again put “Superman” as the answer.

Hit “submit” and BINGO!  I am in!  Now I have three questions and three easy to recall answers.

And then it dawned on me what a naïve dummy I have been for years.  I have been very dutifully picking security questions and honest, correct answers to them.  You don’t need to do that, you idiot, just pick any question and answer it with any word that you will remember!

When you hack into my Sunpass account, please add a few bucks to the balance.

The way they’re planning to pave over the wild parts of the state with concrete tollways to nowhere so a few developers and their paid-for politicians can make out like bandits I won’t be able to move around down there without a few extra quarters.