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The Lost Wallet

Posted by: Ken Day @ 12/03/2009 1:35:24 PM

Recently a friend of one of our employees was travelling in New Zealand. Being fairly security conscious they limited the cards they took with them taking a credit card (Amex), a bank card (with Mastercard), their driver's licence and a passport. They had a photocopy of this documentation with a friend in Australia as well as a copy with them. They had the cards, licence and photocopy of the passport in a wallet, kept the passport separate and the photocopy of the cards / licence with their travelling companion, who had their own wallet as well.

Unfortunately the friend lost the wallet and wasn't entirely sure when this had happened during the previous 3 days (3 towns and about 500km since they clearly remember having the wallet). So they decided to cancel the cards immediately and called the respective lost card numbers. Both call centres asked wallet and non wallet questions such as address, drivers licence number and account details, this information was available in the lost wallet. Some answers were not immediately available from the wallet, such as mother's maiden name, mobile phone number, the name of additional card holders.

On return to Australia the following day they decided to check their work emails and found an email from the police in New Zealand saying that a wallet had been handed in. On calling the police they asked how they obtained the work email address as it was not in the wallet. The police officer said that he used the receipts in the wallet, to call hotel and tour providers until he found one that had the email address. This led to a quick email and the wallet was returned.

What if the person who found the wallet wasn't as honest and did a quick google search on the person looking for facebook / MySpace entries, family history / genealogy and school reunion and work sites they most likely would have captured the answer to the non wallet question (typical questions are; What was your first school, what is your mother's maiden name, where were you born, what is your pet's name?)

How hard is it to find the answer to the secret question or your typical non wallet question ?

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