Wells Fargo Executive Office reps tell me that customer accounts are protected by security authentication questions called "out of wallet" questions. The branch manager tells me these are for high security transactions, and these answers should be known only to me.

However, when I call Customer Service (U.S. 800-869-3557) and ask for my "out of wallet" authentication questions, they are all trivial, such as "What is your area code?" and "What is your street address?".

So far, no one at Wells Fargo seems to know how to change the questions or answers to anything more secure.

This seems like a security issue to me. Any comments? Any way to fix it?

Wells Fargo tells me that this issue will get looked at faster if people call in. Call the number on the back of your card, and ask the rep to tell the "out of wallet" questions. If the answers seem like they're guessable or public, then ask to escalate to the "Executive Office" and ask how to change the questions or answers.

Any advice is much appreciated.

EDIT: if you have any experiences with this, and are able to write about them in this thread, that will help because this thread is going to the Wells team to see what they can do to fix it. Or PM me if you prefer it to be private just to me. Thank you!

(Cross-post from https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/3fsh29/wells_fargo_security_issue_how_to_protect_yourself/)