When security expert Roger Thompson’s Visa card was declined due to suspicions it had been stolen, a Wachovia Bank representative asked him to answer a series of personal questions to confirm his identity.

“It turns out Thompson’s Visa card was flagged and suspended because he hadn’t told the bank he was traveling overseas, a requirement he didn’t know the bank had,” writes Computerworld’s Ellen Messmer. “But the ‘scary bit’ about it all, he says, is that the bank fraud-prevention representative didn’t just ask him to give the correct answers to questions such as his mother’s maiden name, which he had provided to the bank for fraud detection purposes, but also a host of other questions about his daughter-in-law that he had no idea it knew.”

“Thompson says he wracked his brain to figure out where the bank may have gotten this information about his daughter-in-law but he could only reason it was from Facebook, where she’s a friend,” Messmer writes.

Click here to read the Computerworld story.