Edit: I accidentally refreshed the page and it offered alternative questions for ID validation, such as high school of graduation and SSN. But it’s still absurd to expect someone to even humor the premise of the prompt.

  • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    “Using the digits 0 through 9, please arrange them in a sequence that resembles your social security number. You may use each digit more than once.”

    • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
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      21 days ago

      The purpose of these questions is to verify your identity; they have your DoB, and are asking the question to confirm that you are who you say you are, so if you answer N/A when the correct answer is one of the other 4, you’ll be denied access to whatever you’re signing up for.

      All that said, “What month were you born in?” would have been a much better question for the reasons OP notes.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        All that said, “What month were you born in?” would have been a much better question for the reasons OP notes.

        We were discussing this in the atheism community and the advantage of zodiac sign over birth month is that there is not an even overlap between months and zodiac signs, so 30% of people will be born in a different month than the one associated with the sign. I’m one of these. I was born near the end of the month so the sign I would be associated with is not the sign people associate with the month.

        Don’t get me wrong, I think this was a stupid security question, but it’s less stupid than it first sounds because of that.

    • Squorlple@lemmy.worldOP
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      21 days ago

      From what I begrudgingly know about astrology, “Does not apply” would only pertain to people who haven’t been born yet or who were born outside of the solar system. Knowing if “None of the above” applies still requires knowledge of how the arbitrary categories correspond with the calendar.

  • StarlightDust@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    20 days ago

    This is a CAPTCHA that is using security by obscurity. Honestly, it seems a lot better than a lot of alternatives around at the moment designed to combat the smarter CAPTCHA solvers.

      • pixelscript@lemm.ee
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        20 days ago

        Someone looking to specifically break this website’s captcha wouldn’t have a hard time.

        But bots using off-the-shelf captcha solvers will be screened out en masse, because how many of them are equipped to correctly answer this stupidly specific question? That’s the obscurity.

    • deranger@sh.itjust.works
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      19 days ago

      This isn’t a CAPTCHA, It’s identify verification. Similar to those ID verifications when they ask you where you had a previous address, who you opened a loan with, how much the loan was for, etc.

      CAPTCHA is intended to ensure that a human is logging in, not a bot. Identity verification is to make sure that the person creating the account is actually that person. Completely different use cases.

  • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
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    20 days ago

    This isn’t about whether the question is appropriate, I agree it isn’t. I’m just curious. While I’m not a believer, I do know what ‘type’ I supposedly fall in. Do most nonbelievers know their sign, or do they have no idea?

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      20 days ago

      It probably relates to your age. When I grew up there were still newspapers (and dinosaurs) and you probably ran across a small horoscope section somewhere in there (especially on or near the comics page), so for me seeing the dates was virtually unavoidable. But I haven’t run across a random horoscope in over 20 years, so if you’re born after the millennium I’m sure it was much less prominent in your life.

    • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      While the wording is stupid, and “astrological” indeed refers to the superstitious bullshit, the zodiacs are not a believer/non-believer thing, but based on an astronomical(!) constellation being at a particular position in the sky in the period of said zodiac. That said, however, and without checking, I am sure that this does not align with the dates assigned to the zodiacs at all anymore because the Earth wobbles on it’s orbit & also because the zodiac cycles could never possibly align precisely with a year on Earth, simply because the dates are fixed and don’t account for leap years (the ~0.25 day extra each year).

      Why did I make this point? Because it appears that in Europe at least, everyone knows their zodiac - I would be surprised if it’s any different in countries that use the same calendar.

      • KubeRoot@discuss.tchncs.de
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        20 days ago

        I don’t think zodiac cycles need to account for leap years, since it’s the leap years that account for things to make dates align. If by wobble you mean something like the tilt of the axis of rotation changing, then yeah, that’d mess things up - otherwise, I think the constellations are basically just based on where the sun is, and this which direction your part of the earth is facing during the night. If I’m correct, then I suspect the zodiacs do still align, but the constellations will differ depending on your latitude…

        • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          By saying wobble, I was referring to:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession

          For identical reasons, the apparent position of the Sun relative to the backdrop of the stars at some seasonally fixed time slowly regresses a full 360° through all twelve traditional constellations of the zodiac, at the rate of about 50.3 seconds of arc per year, or 1 degree every 71.6 years.

          Re leap years: On second thought you might be correct about that one.

    • daggermoon@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      I don’t know what my zodiac sign is despite several people having told me. I never seem to remember. That’s how insignificant it is in my life.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Do most nonbelievers know their sign, or do they have no idea?

      In the very rare case where it comes up, I almost always have to look up the answer. Why would I have the signs and their date ranges memorized? This is like asking someone whose only tangentially heard of D&D to name his favorite first level spell.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        Ah you must be a lion then, they are always so aloof.
        Just kidding, it’s nonsense and I don’t believe it one single bit…

        But ARE you a lion?

        If yes: I KNEW IT! It was so obvious!
        If no I’m x: Ah that explains why I mistook you for a Lion. X have many of the same traits.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      I know mine because my personality is the stereotype of my sign. It’s just a coincidence, but it’s one that comes up from time to time

    • Kuma@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Yes, everyone around me knows (I think most like I saw it in a news letter), but most of us do not know what it actually means. Some just know a few things about their own sign because those attributes was told to them and actually fit. So it is more like a way to give compliments if someone who knows tells you “oh you are x, no wonder you are so great at y!”. So I have no negative feelings about it. I just don’t believe in it.

      The only attribut i know that isn’t for my own sign is that Scorpions are horny ppl, my Scorpion friends brag about that. I don’t know why.

      As a kid was it common to use it more like a group name just like some use the seasons like winter, summer, spring, autumn child. Many tv series, games and cartoons used it (not in a serious way). I actually bought as a kid the wrong sign from a glas smith and didn’t know it was wrong for many years, apparently it wasn’t even close to mine 😂

  • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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    20 days ago

    As offensive to my sensibilities as hocus-pocus may be, a question that requires me to be competent enough to use a search engine to derive the answer to their question may be acceptable in some cases… But I rather doubt it is acceptable in this instance.

    If part of the intent is to dissuade those who do not have a basic grasp of language or problem solving skills, then it seems the mission is accomplished. But I wonder if it’s entirely ADA* compliant.

    *Americans With Disabilities Act, here in the states

  • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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    19 days ago

    I see people’s comments that it’s technically a fact derived from your date of birth, and doesn’t require superstition. But I have no idea of which sign lines up with my birthday, so I propose some different questions:

    Which Chinese emperor was born in the same lunar year as you?

    According to the office of national statistics, how many people born on your birthday in Northern Europe were called John?

    How many days is it from your fourth birthday to the nearest February 29th?

  • serenissi@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    Why is that a superstition? It is trivial to write a program to calculate corresponding zodiac sign of any particular date. It’s just a bad captcha and I don’t think most people remember/know enough to calculate in their head.

    • Baaahb@feddit.nl
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      20 days ago

      The questions still valid… Why would I simply be aware what year I was born in under the Chinese zodiac so that I could get a new SS card. You are missing the forest for the trees.

      • Dragonstaff@leminal.space
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        19 days ago

        Because you have Google. I suspect most people know their star sign. (The Chinese Zodiac is something different.) I don’t believe in astrology, but it’s certainly common enough that it seems difficult to avoid learning at some point. If not, you can find out in 30 seconds.

        All it is is an abstraction to make it slightly harder for bad actors and computer programs, not an endorsement of astrology.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      I think it’s at a sort of weird crossroads between superstition and factual data, because it is trivial to calculate the factual data regarding the position of any star in the sky at any point, but the superstition comes in when you associate the positions of a rather arbitrary group of stars in relation to a date of birth.

      I just thought of this though- you could argue that this is an anti-astrology security measure because it proves that you can’t guess someone’s zodiac sign based on things like their interests and personality traits.

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Zodiac signs are about as accurate as tarot readings or reading tea leaves. They’re even wrong about what they are based on. The star locations and sun precession hasn’t coincided with the original 12 zodiac constellations for centuries. People use the dates and signs as they were set by astrology tradition ages ago, but the dates when the sun changes from one constellation to the next is also absolutely arbitrary to make it match exactly 4 and a half weeks.

      The personality descriptions for zodiac signs are textbook examples of cold reading. A technique of making intentionally ambiguous but agreeable affirmations so that people project their self-view onto the descriptions disregarding evidence or specifities.

      It is a superstition as it is the belief on the supernatural influence of the relative apparent position of stars in the sky over the behavior and personality of individuals. It’s a, mostly, harmless superstition, but superstitious none the less.

  • criticon@lemmy.ca
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    21 days ago

    I really hate the MIlogin questions, sometimes I fail to answer correctly for some stupid mistake and need to wait a couple of days to retry

  • tunetardis@lemmy.ca
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    21 days ago

    Interesting. I wonder what the thinking is here? It’s almost like a really poor manual password hash. Here’s something derived from my date of birth. Store that instead of the actual date. Pretty weak though.

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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      21 days ago

      It is probably something to confuse automated systems. A person could figure out their astrological sign easily by knowing their birthday. A computer attempting to brute force attack would probably be less likely to know how to answer the question.

      • snooggums@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        A person could figure out their astrological sign easily by knowing their birthday.

        The best thing to do during a security check is to google how to know your astrology sign.

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      My guess is that it’s asking for you to confirm your date of birth, to a minimal degree of accuracy without actually having to reveal your date of birth.

      I kind of like the idea. Most people know what their star sign is, whether they believe in it or not. So they will be able to answer quickly and correctly. Those that need to look it up it might need to be more critical of the login for.