Man Says Byzantine ING Identity Verification Stops Him From Opening Account
Rick recently moved and needed to set up a checking account quickly, so he went with ING, the online bank with which he already has a savings account. He tells personal finance blog Poorer Than You, the bank wouldn't give him account because it couldn't verify his identity.
He wrote this letter to ING, about the process of setting up the account (which Poorer Than You blogger Stephanie permitted us to reuse):
Once I connected with the representative, I provided my current address, phone number, date of birth, and [Social Security Number], as well as my ING Direct pin.
The final step, I was told, was a series of multiple choice questions which would complete the identification process. I answered the first two, both of which were applicable to me. The last three concerned a person with whom I am not familiar, so I answered accordingly. When the representative put my answers into the system, she informed me that, based on answering too many of them incorrectly, I would never be permitted to open an Electric Orange account. [emphasis added]
I thanked the representative and hung up. Assuming (erroneously, as I would find out) that the check was performed through one of the three credit bureaus, I immediately began contacting them, requesting copies of my credit report, and attempting to question the information they required for identification purposes. I cleared two of the three credit reports with no problem – the third will arrive in the mail, but based on my later interaction with ING, I suspect it will be clean as well.
Having used up my available routes, I decided to inquire further with ING regarding the identification process. I called the same security department phone number and talked with another representative. This time, I explained the entire situation again, including my efforts to check my credit. She explained that the identification procedure is not conducted through a direct credit check with any of the three credit bureaus. Instead, a third party company produces a series of questions that they believe will positively identify me. When I asked whether I could contact the company directly, or provide alternative forms of identification, she claimed that there was no other manner by which I could disprove the answers to the questions and prove that I am, in fact, myself. [emphasis added] The representative gave me this email address as a point of contact for continuing with this issue.
So, the apparently unchangeable bottom line is: there exists a company whom I have never explicitly authorized to store my personal information; this company is responsible for determining whether or not I know enough about the unverified information that they maintain to conduct business with their client. The company does not accept corrections to the information, and may at any time in the future damage my ability to establish relationships, financial and otherwise, with other organizations.
I view this matter as a very serious breach of my trust in ING as an organization.
The internets are filled with ING love stories, and I banked with them for a few years without any trouble before I switched over to Emigrant Direct. Is Rick's tale an aberration, or have any of you had trouble with ING or other online banks?
Something is Rotten in the State of ING Direct [Poorer Than You]
(Photo: amanjo)
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Comments:
OMG the same exact thing happened with me & MoneyGram this weekend. My mom needed to wire money to my brother but didn't have a credit card/checking account and no time to drive to WalMart to do it with cash.
I offered to open an account and do it online. It asked me "What county is Rockaway Park NY in?" (Where I used to live). Then it asked me to select the year, make & model of a car I own. No problem.
Then it asked me what my relationship was with "Kelly XXX" Same last name but I've NEVER heard of anybody named Kelly in my family - and it's not a big family. So I selected that I didn't know this person.
Then it asked in what year I purchased property at 315 Elderts Lane. I don't own property and I've lived in several states and do not even know of an Elderts lane in ANY of them. So I selected that I don't own property.
Same result - they were unable to confirm my identity and I am not allowed to open an account.
Obviously I get the need for tight security especially in these times, but isn't the banning for life rather extreme when you have a system that is still so susceptible to errors? If you already have an account with them I don't see why they'd make you jump through all the hoops anyway.
Everyone knows that our credit reporting system is 100% accurate and will never fail us. Clearly, the OP just has multiple personalities.
I am going to guess they are using Lexis/Nexis. But it is just a guess. I have seen there ID verification software and it is good. Foolproof? No.
@chemmy: Good thing my last name is the same as that of a reality show family. I hope I get asked about them someday in an identity check. Right now, I just have to settle for every third person pointing it out to me, as if I haven't already noticed.
You know whats gold? Clicking a tag like "ING" whose stories dont appear very often on consumerist and look at the old articles. Hindsight can be full of giggles. But mostly, it provides an interesting perspective on how our perceptions and way of thinking have changed:
Here is a reader who has a doubt that ING might just be a scammy "too-good-to-be-true" scheme:
[consumerist.com]
[It also tells me that RandomHookup, Hooray4Zoidberg and Jay are ancient commenters.]
And here is an article just a few months before this one:
A reader was gushing about ING Direct
[consumerist.com]
Also I like how all of the profiles are non active - though that might just be because the system changed somewhere down the line.
this happened to me with Sallie Mae once. I didn't have the correct address on my ID, but to do so I would need to fly to New York state, in the middle of the semester mind you, and get a new license. So they had me answer those types of questions, all of which I didn't know the answers to due to the fact that my mother moved to a whole new state while I was in college. The questions were about the new location, which I had never actually lived in...because I was going to school in Pittsburgh full time. what a load of crap.
@zigziggityzoo: Could be, but it sounds like the same as this article. The identity verification method that I've linked to above draws information from public databases, so it's feasible that your name could become linked with someone with the same last name, perhaps because you attended the same school or lived in the same town. No identity theft, just an error-prone identification method.
Wow, these questions must be getting worse. I was able to open an ING account when they asked me things about my mortgage, etc, but questions chemmy got stuck with would stump me, too.
I opened an ING Electric Orange account with them a little while ago after having had a savings with them for years. Perhaps it's that I don't have a common name (though my father and I share the same name and have VERY similar SSNs that get us mixed up all the time), but I did not have any sort of problems. Perhaps I got lucky, don't know.
@henrygates: I remember when I opened my ING account a few years back, they asked me which previous phone number I had owned. 2 or 3 were clearly no phone number I ever had, but one was just one digit off of a phone number I had had at one time. I selected none and that seemed to be the right answer. I assumed that was part of the test, presenting info that did not apply to see if I would try and guess which one did apply.
@Jack: I got "what is the street intersecting the road you live on nearest to your house" once. My answer: "Damned if I know, I just turn left at the stop sign, drive for 80 feet then turn right to get home".
@chemmy: This seems like a horribly inaccurate and inefficient way to verify someone's identity, especially if it's this prone to throwing questions at you that have absolutely nothing to do with you. Way to go, online banks. >.<
There's something kind of Phildickian about a computer declaring that you are not you. In the next scene, I see the OP in a trenchcoat wandering through city streets in the rain.
@katstermonster: Excellent idea! FCS Online obviously trolled the internet to find random information on who they thought was the OP and then assigned that information to the OP without any sort of verification.
Of course, the only obvious response to this is to troll the internet for information about the company that's responsible for the problem and assign that information to them without any sort of verification!
The stupid thing was that I ended up having to create an account in my husband's name instead. He got things like "which one of these is your mothers name" and then the next one was "Please select the person named below that is related to you" and it was his mom again... Then it asked again about the car and again about the county in Rockaway Park he lived in.
Random...
Then after if verified he was "him", it gave him a message that he had to call a customer service representative to verify his identity....
That was stupid because she re-asked all of the questions and then wanted to know where he lived, where he was right now (we were on a trip), she questioned why he said he lived in GA when Rockaway Park is in NY (and the house we lived in 4!!! years ago). Then she wanted to know who the person was he was sending money to and why he was sending money and if he knew this person and ever met him. It was a full 10 minutes of questioning...
I'm certain E*Trade would love your business. They offer all of the same products and services as ING. They also have many local branch offices where if there is a problem, you can show up with ID, Passport, blood relatives, recorder of wills, list of meals eaten for the past 20 years, car registrations, deeds to your homes, or anything else they may request as verification that you are who you say you are.
What if they request thumbprints and I have no thumbs :(
@lostingenerica:
I had the same thing happen with Sallie Mae. That's actually how I first discovered someone in Missouri had stolen my identity and opened up an Electric Company account with it.
I've found ING to be one of the few banks that take online security seriously. I don't know how you can be simultaneously easy to use and secure at the same time: statisticians call it type 1 vs type 2 errors. It really, really sucks to be the type 2 error, though.
Simmons?
Gosselin?
Duggar?
Simpson-Lachey?
I would pass with flying colours if someone asked me how I knew any of the Kardashians.
I ran into something like this when I requested my credit report. A few of the questions were previous addresses, apartments I rented 20+ years ago in college. Most of them were for a maximum of 1 year so I couldn't remember the number (I did remember the streets though). It was stupid - why can other people pull my credit report with little person info, but I have to remember everything I did 20 years ago?
@chemmy: Ok, let me shed some light on this. I used to work at Sprint and towards the end of my tenure at the call center, we started using a verification system like the one used above. The questions are drawn from information that's in the public record, hence why they ask you about addresses you've lived, properties you've had, cards you've owned and in some cases, other people who have lived at the same address you did (i.e. anyone who used your house as their legal address during the time you lived in it).
Now with our system, you had to answer 2 of 3 right. If you failed, I believe you could call back and try again after 24 hours.
As I understood it, the questions and information in them were supplied to us by what only identified as a "Third party company".
@dragonfire81: oh I might also add, after the test was complete, we were only told whether you passed or failed. We had no way to know which questions you got right and which you got wrong.
One more thing--- your wife's legal name is now Taargus Taargus.
@henrygates: The problem these questions are trying to solve is faced with a similar dilemma as the CAPTCHA: eventually, computers (here that's databases that identity thieves can access; for the CAPTCHA that's the algorithms that read the images) will get so good that it'll be impossible for regular people to get the answers correct.
There has to be a better way. The fact that the company asking the questions aggregated the data means that it's unlikely that they're the only one who did so. Hence, it's useless as a form of identity verification: it only proves that 1) you are who you say you are or 2) you did your research on who you say you are.
I personally have never had problems, but my father-in-law had a similar issue with ING. The good news (?) was that they mixed up his information with my brother-in-law (his son), so he was able to answer all of the questions correctly, but I don't believe the mix-up was ever resolved.
I've not had a problem with ING. I've had an account with them for nearly 2.5 years.
Now the Swiss on the other hand... Those guys used to be so trustworthy before they back stabbed me and gave my identification to the IRS.
@chemmy: That happened to me with TransUnion. I don't care enough to print out a bill and fax it to them because anyone who ever checks my credit always uses Equifax.
@chemmy: Asking the questions is fine. Asking questions that are not relevant, or for which they have the wrong answers, is what is all wrong. If these companies are going to collect information on people and use it in ways that impact people's lives, then they need to get it 100% correct ... 99.999999999% does not cut it. That, or provide a means to contest and correct the information in a timely manner at least as good as that done for credit reports.
@chemmy: I offered to open an account and do it online. It asked me "What county is Rockaway Park NY in?" (Where I used to live).
Google tells me that's Queens county. Does that mean I'm you?
@macndub: They just need to get their data correct. If they are storing incorrect data, there is a reason and that reason may well be because someone else is already using the identity. And that means their so-called security is not at all secure. It means they should be liable, too.
Sounds like they just used that site PeekYou. I ran up on it when I Googled my own name. For some reason that site thinks I might be related to a co-worker and some lady who doesn't even share the same last name with me.
I can't even remember my age most of the time. How am I supposed to remember, say, what address I lived at in 2006, especially if you give me an address that sounds like an address I once lived at?
Somebody who bought my information online for $20 me just might have a better chance at passing an identity verification report than I would.
I would most certainly fail. I use the internet to disseminate misinformation about myself all the time; different date of birth, place of residence, etc. I do this because they imagine that data mining will work with all of us.
I have been with ING for seven years and am generally pretty happy, but this article points up something that ING customers already know- Namely , when something goes wrong ,ING becomes a different animal altogether. All of the self deprecating cuteness goes out the window and they become a Bank Of America with a different color scheme. Yes, you can get a human on the line at corporate HQ ,but they have no ability to do anything but regurgitate what you already know and recite their policies and rules.They are truly zero help in resolving an issue.Your best bet IMHO is to spread your business around among Emigrant irect ,HSBC and Ameritrade or Schwab. I would never give all my business to one bank. Too much risk of a "hostage situation" with your money.
It's probably something provided by Lexis-Nexis. Even better the TSA is using similar question batteries to decide whether they're going to let you on the plane if you don't have ID with you.
Now, if ING decides they want to use a private contractor to decide if they want to do business with you, and that contractor screws up, well, that's ING's call.
If a gov't agency is denying you the right to travel based on those same questions, that's something else entirely.
@katstermonster: Once the correct third party is identified, I think OP and maybe the rest of us need to sue them for violation of our civil and consumer rights wholesale, depending on how many banks, credit bureaus, etc. they jack up our chances with by "providing services" for them.
@Michael Belisle: It's inherently possible. According to MoneyGram, I am not me so someone out there must be.
@Jack: It's an interesting theory, but I can tell you right now that the OP does not have a very common name either.
@chemmy: Didn't that just happen at a BoA? They wouldn't cash a double amputee's check because he couldn't give them a thumbprint.
Great. I've already been a victim of internet trolling data and mistaken identity, thanks to the fact that I share the same first and (very rare) last name with two women who are from the same town as I am. One of them even has my exact same middle name. Nasty debt collectors who threaten to sue are no fun even when you know they're not after you. I've seen verification questions that are so far off that they must be related to these other women...
Here's an article that seems to identify the third party as FCS OnLine: [yes2privacy.wordpress.com]
This is an article from Australia, but the description of the method used jives with the OP's problem.