Everybody Is Sick & Tired of Online Security Measures, Poll Finds

Most Americans are fed up with what they say are unnecessary, overly elaborate security measures — including the ones at credit unions and other financial institutions — according to a new FICO survey.

The poll of 2,000 U.S. adults found that 64% didn’t see a need for elaborate passwords requiring a mix of numbers, symbols and capital letters; 71% said captcha codes were frustrating and featured illegible words; and 65% were annoyed with email systems that automatically log them out as a security measure. About half (48%) were frustrated with two-step verification. Overall, about eight in 10 said they didn’t see the need for what they considered unwarranted security procedures.

Security measures at financial institutions were a particularly significant source of frustration as well, according to FICO. Twenty-two percent of respondents said they would either give up on opening a bank account completely or give up and try at a different financial institutions if they had to jump through too many security hoops, such as having to post documents or travel to a branch in person. More than a quarter (26%) felt they should be able to open an account “immediately,” and 20% said they thought the whole process should take less than an hour.

“There’s a real discrepancy here — consumers are glad their bank is protecting them, but they’re frustrated that the protection is making it harder for them to open accounts and make purchases,” said TJ Horan, who oversees fraud solutions at FICO. “When it comes to digital transformation, a smooth customer experience is going to be vital. The winners will be the firms that can balance this against the need to stop fraud.”

On average, respondents had 34 online accounts and 78% had trouble keeping track of all their passwords, the poll said.

But the frustration wasn’t limited to online interactions. Almost half of the respondents (47%) in the poll said they were tired of “having to answer endless security questions” when calling customer service. Another 46% thought airport security was an inconvenience.

Part of the issue may be that many respondents appear to have seen mixed results from all those security measures, particularly at their financial institutions. According to FICO, four out of five said they trusted their financial institutions to protect their accounts from criminal activity, and 71% were confident their banks verified account holders and prevented fraud, but over half the respondents said they were victims of banking fraud, and only 43% were satisfied with how their financial institutions dealt with it.