Q. When making boring administrative telephone calls in non-private situations
one is often asked for a couple of letters from a password. That is fine because the people overhearing one cannot know the rest of the password. What I do mind is being asked to give my full date of birth in a non-private situation. It is not the breach of security I am worried about but the breach of vanity. I don’t want people I work with to know this embarrassing fact. How can one get around this, Mary?
Name and address withheld A. Let’s say you were born on 9 January 1947. Simply act daft and drone out the year of your birth first, e.g. ‘Four Seven’. Pause and wait for the prompt from the operative for the month and day. You can then drone out ‘oh-nineoh-one’. It will sound to eavesdroppers as if you are just supplying more code or reference numbers.
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