The Security Mentor

Not for any sinister reason, but because they don't know, at least not the call center employees.

Your bank should, and probably does, have some sort of backup check of who you are so that if someone steals your password they can't necessarily clean out your account. The cleanest way to do this technically is called "two factor authentication", where your password is one "factor" and the other might be a random number from a pad or a small device that you have with you but that a password thief wouldn't have. Many banks also have extra security questions that they may ask if you're logging in from a different computer from your usual one.

Can you get a bank employee to explain this to you? Sarah Scalet of CIO.COM called several banks about their online banking security features. Bank of America gave her a good explanation, but the rest were dismal.

Which means that if you sign up for online banking, you'll have a hard time judging the security features ahead of time. Don't let that stop you, though: paper banking has hazards too, and many people in my area have had to get locking mailboxes to combat mail theft.