Password security questions in Social Networking Age

Whenever I call the bank customer care, they ask my date of birth, last 4 digits of a/c number or debit card or mother's maiden name. These days I wonder how strong these authorization controls are, as some of them can be easily taken from one's online profile.

To confirm, I took a list of common password security questions from online to check how many of those can be answered by having access to one's social networking profiles - FB/G+/LinkedIn - and not surprised - A lot of them can be answered. If the person is a contact/friend, then almost all.

My dear young cousins and elder uncles - please keep an eye on what you share on facebook/orkut/G+.

I removed some poor and obvious ones. Here goes the list:-

• What was your childhood nickname?
• What is the name of your favorite childhood friend?
• What is your oldest sibling’s birthday month and year? (e.g., January 1900)
• What school did you attend for sixth grade?
• What is your oldest cousin's first and last name?
• In what city does your nearest sibling live?
• In what city or town was your first job?
• What is the name of the place your wedding reception was held?
• What was the name of your elementary / primary school?
• What is the name of the company of your first job?
• To what city did you go on your honeymoon?
• What is your current car registration number?
• What month and day is your anniversary? (e.g., January 2)
• What is your grandmother's first name?
• What is your mother's middle name?
• What is the last name of your favorite high school teacher?
• What was the make and model of your first car?
• Where did you vacation last year?
• What is the name, breed, and color of current pet?
• What is your preferred musical genre?
• What is the name of the first undergraduate college you attended?
• What was your high school mascot?
• What year did you graduate from High School?
• What is the name of the first school you attended?
• What was your favorite sport in high school?
• What is the name of the High School you graduated from?
• What is your pet's name?
• In what year was your father born?
• In what year was your mother born?
• What is your mother’s (father's) first name?
• What is your mother's maiden name?
• What was the color of your first car?
• What is your father's middle name?

Games - innovations

A friend's post on "Nostalgic Games" post made me nostalgic and you know what happens when I become nostalgic – a blog post comes up. Of course, how I can resist, that too after Deepak asking me what all games I played. But, I do not have enough time to explain/translate the numerous games I played. So, I will just list down the small innovations/derivations we (me, my bro and my friends) made to keep us alive and going whenever we felt boring.

1. Loans and pawn broking (hypothecation) in Trade/Monopoly: We started playing Trade/Business/Monopoly as early as at 8. Slowly, we were bored. Then we introduced loan concept. A player can hypothecate his city (or bungalow/godown) with the bank – should pay an interest of 50/100 for every round until he can pay back. And, the loaned amount is used to buy new sites. See, we were good real investors at that time. Of course, genes of a banker father helped. But, I am not a good investor now :-(

2. Share Business: We were bored of Trade by 12. Then, we conceptualized the share business. Instead of cities, the monopoly board would have Company names. Players can own a company or buy a share of the ownership. You get dividend similar to the rents for the sites. Having a type-writer at home meant we printed our own currency and Share certificates. Now, I am trying hard to balance my demat account portfolio.

3. Shooting range: Inspired by watching 1988 Olympics in Doordarsan, at the age of 8, we set up our own shooting competition with plastic bulleted guns bought in local carnival (exhibition).

4. Archery: Most of the kids might have made bow-arrows stealing sticks from broom and then having a war (inspired from DD Ramayan). We did that too, got bored and went a step ahead and conducted archery competition similar to shooting (again inspired by Olympics).

5. Thermocol bats and squash/TT: What would you do with those left-over thermocol (polystyrene) sheets after you were finished with your school projects? We carved small TT-size bats (rackets) out of thermocol and conducted squash tournaments in the drawing room and table-tennis on the dining table.

6. Tennis with exam-pads: Exam-pads are the ubiquitous ready-to-use bats/rackets to play cricket or any ball-game, especially in school. We even played shuttle-badminton with the pads. But, the tennis game with exam-pad and rubber ball tops the list – yeah, we followed proper tennis scoring of games and sets.

7. Golf: Having new cable TV connection and StarSports for the first time meant we watched almost all sports on it, including the boring golf. Inspired by it, we played golf (mainly putting and clubbing) at home - digging holes in the backyard and using sticks as the drives.

8. Basketball with mug as basket: Once, we wanted to play basket-ball inside home. Hang two mugs to opposite-facing windows, use a plastic ball – we were ready to play basket-ball :-)

9. Cricket with duster(wiper)-chacks : In Engineering, none would carry exam-pad. We tried with books, but they were heavy. So, we played cricket with chalks and duster. That too, while classes were going on in the adjacent rooms.

10. Timeless test: Bored of regular 10 or 15-over matches, we started playing 2-innings unlimited over cricket matches with all rules including innings lead and follow-on.

If these innovations were needed after we got bored with the below games, one can understand how much we enjoyed our childhood. Thanks to never pressurising parents (for education), I (and my bro) had a wondeful childhood   Even getting cable TV in my seventh standard did not stop us.

Repeating the games I mentioned as comment on Deepak’s post:- Nela-banda, Udum (Hide&Seek), Veeri-veeri gummadipandu veeri peremi, Help, Current-Shock, Ice-boy, Ice-Press, Color-color, Enimidi-rallu aata, Tokkudu Billa (3-4 varieties), Kundullu, 2 variations of London, Steps game, Mukku-gilludu aata, Show (Played with chits), Ramudu-Seetha, Accham-gillalu, Chinta pikkalata, Edu penkulata, Uru-peru-cinima-vastuvu, Karrata, Bechalu, Goleelu (marbles), Trade/Monopoly, Vaikhuntapali & Snakes&Ladder, Ludo, Ashta Chemma (2-3 varieties), Gudu-gudu gunjam, Cat-ball, Card games like WWF, cricket stats, Archery, Shooting, paper-fans, Donga-police with self-manufactured paper guns, Dadi, Puli-meka, the number games, all kinds of Sand games, playing Kings&Wars.

The above were in addition to the usual Cricket (one-step, two-step, tennis, tape-ball, cork-ball, double wicket, test matches- unlimited overs, ), Chess, Carroms (game,rupees-paise, business, puli-meka), Kabaddi, Shuttle Badminton, kho-kho, flying kites, video games (Mario, tetris) and computer games.

Games played (conducted) at school - like lemon&spoon, three-leg race, gunny-bag race, Ram-Ravan, memory game, etc

Millennium Transformation

Mobile phones, internet, email, LCD TVs, iPods, shopping malls, ATM – Things that generally come to one’s mind if asked about the changes in lifestyle or the development India has made in 21st century or the new millennium. “That’s it!” is what I have been thinking for the last few days. “No, it is not!” has come the reply. The list has grown in size while I wonder how my life has changed (positively) due to those advancements. Note that I am thinking from an average Indian and not as an IT guy or a rich guy (not that I am) or a gadget freak (not that I am).
Cash transfer: ATMs and swipe cards can be rated as the biggest change in our lives. This generation students who simply take their dad’s ATM card or add-on cards while moving into hostels (or boarding schools) do not know the troubles students or children staying away faced in 20th century. You have to wait for your Money Order (by post) to receive your money (the PostMan was always in demand) only to see it vanish in seconds after payments to fees, laundry-man, canteen and other friends only to have a faint smile at one or two currency notes (if left) remaining in your hand. Once I had made 800KM to-fro 24-hour journey to my brother’s University to hand him money he needed to go for a college tour (as Western Union too could not promise to deliver in 10 hours).
Online application filling: When I had to apply for my engineering entrances or later IITs for M.Tech, I had to visit multiple banks on different dates (sometimes traveling to Vijayawada or Hyderabad) with various denominations of DDs (Demand Drafts) to buy the applications; then visit the post-offices, do speed post or registered post as required, pray Gods and wait for the acknowledgement letter to confirm that my application was received; then again wait anxiously for the hall-ticket/interview letter. Now, you simply apply online, sometimes do payments online, download the hall-ticket and appear for the exam. Similarly, businessmen had to carry around big suitcases of cash and check-books to do the transactions. Now, you can roam with a laptop and a swipe card.
Road rollers and laying roads: Laying roads was a multi-day (sometimes multi-week) exercise then. Dig the road, lay stones as the base layer, roll with the big road-rollers, lay sand-stones, roll again, lay mud, roll again, burn tar (in drums), pour tar, roll again and wait for the tar to dry and harden. Now, the modern machines take the tar-mixture and lays the road in less than an hour and you can drive almost immediately on the road. Building CC (cement concrete) roads is also an easier task these days.
Plumbing: My dad bought a house and got it renovated. So, I know in detail each and every step in house-building and the effort needed. Most of those steps have been made easier and quicker due to technical advancements. Then, pipes were made of iron or PVC and the plumbers used to carry big toolkit to create threads to the pipe-ends and use big to join them. Now, the new vinyl pipes can be easily joined with an adhesive paste. Even my dad does it easily now.
Carpentry:Wood-work these days, either making doors or tables or show-cases has been automated a lot. Electric saws and blades are used to cut logs into blocks, designs are made with machinery, screws and nails are fitted with machines and polishing is applied with machines.
Flooring: Tiles were manually cut, sized and polished. Now, you can cut them using a machine.
RCC Slabs: Laying a slab for the roof would need you to use big hammers to cut iron-rods, hire an ox-pulled or tractor-driven concrete machine, fixing wooden molds with bamboo-sticks as support with hundreds of nails, water it and wait for weeks before raising the next floor. Now, you have machine-cutters for iron, ready-mix supplied by truck, fill in the metal sheets supported by pipes and you can start the next floor within days.
Threshers and Excavators:
Tractors replacing ploughs and other tractor add-ons had become a not-rare scenes. I have been to rural areas regularly, and I am surprised with the use of technology in recent years. Threshers are used to thrash grain and excavators (or JCB/proclainer as popular) are used to dug/plough the fields. A lot of middle-sized farmers too prefer this owing to non-availability of laborers because of migration and high-cost.
Milking machines:
Dairy industry too had gone a change with the use of milking machines and grass-cutters getting increased as well as the use of artificial serum. I went to AP Dairy exhibition held by the state goverment recently at Hyderabad and was overwhelmed by the huge response from the farmer community.
SMS tickets: One can travel in bus or train by just showing an SMS on their phone. I never imagined this 5 years ago, leave 15 years ago. It is not only trains, both RTC (public) and private buses in AP allow you to travel by an SMS. IN RTC, it is not even mandatory to show your ID, unless another passenger claims for the same seat. Even the ticket-cases are being replaced by TIMs (Ticket Issuing Machines). Gone were our days when we preserved all our bus-tickets, used rubber-bands to tie them, used punch-holes to play ‘buss-aata’ (driver-conducter-bus) game.
Many of these things have been taken for granted now-a-days.
Please add if you see any such innovations that have transformed our lives in the recent years - only from ‘90s onwards. The specified innovations should be available to a larger community. No references to electronic/computer appliances like MP3 players, DVDs, washing machines, please.