So as we continue to do quite a few verification phone calls every day, people tend to mess up. Human nature.
Recently I have gotten to thinking - Google has you enter a four digit PIN, and for whatever reason that popped in our head, we all agreed that a four digit PIN was good. But why four digits? Why not 3? 2? Or even 1? If the purpose is to verify that someone owns a phone, how does entering four digits make it any more verified? At the end of the day, if someone has access to a phone, the # of digits is irrelevant. I can understand the argument against one digit (they may accidentally hit a digit), but at two the likelyhood of someone entering in a PIN when they didn’t mean becomes rather unlikely (purely based on available #s, there is a 1% chance IF they intend on entering two digits).
Anyway - I think the four digit idea makes no sense. And yet almost everyone I have ever talked to it thought it was perfectly reasonable.
3 Responses to: Phone Verification
Jacob (lurker)
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
1
Haha, I think 4 is a good number too. I’m not quite sure what your problem with it is.
dch (newbie)
December 6th, 2008 at 1:27 am
2
Ahmed-
The reason is security - think about the number of possible combinations when using 1 or 2 numbers vs. 4.
Ahmed (l337)
December 6th, 2008 at 1:52 am
3
What security? Your system calls the phone # - you initiated that phone call, so obviously they must have access to that phone.
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