Bank of America gets a bit too odd and personal as I set up my SiteKey account. SiteKey, for those unaware, is a new security protocol BoA has adopted to authenticate the online banking customers.

First, there is the notion of being “challenged” with a picture for which you have to type in a label for. These pictures ranges from cats to chairs to other miscellaney. It’s a good idea to lessen the amount of vital information like account number or even account names passing through the wires, but the pictures make the system appear more comical (and this is a bank I’m talking about here!) rather than user-friendly or secure.

The stranger part is when it asks you to set up challenge questions and answers. The questions are preset, and they get pretty personal. Take for example, the set of questions I’ve captured above. It aims to digs deep into our memory, and perhaps inadvertendly awaken some emotions as we go about our business of managing our money. Somehow it made sense to Bank of America designers to interlace the thought of that first girlfriend, or that honeymoon as appropriate information for my account access. The clear line separating business and pleasure have been further blurred by our own financial institutions.