I wonder how long it will be before some cunt suggests we all need biometric ID cards or some sort of RFID implant.
The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis
101–110 of 132 posts
Re: The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I believe that all EU has a similar approach Not at all. At least Finland and Sweden do have a social security number assigned at birth (or immigration). They can be seen as a primary key in many contexts, not only when dealing with social security or the public sector. I guess there could be more such countries. In Finland the official recommendation these days is that you should be very cautious with your social…
>Not at all. At least Finland and Sweden do have a social security number assigned at birth (or immigration). Maybe we are misunderstanding each other, the Codice Fiscale in Italy is the same, assigned at birth (or immigration). The difference is that it is not on the ID card (as it is - say - in Finland or Sweden or Denmark or Spain), but on a separate card. It is a "generic" identifying number with all public admin…
> Of course each country will have its own uses (or non uses) for the thing, that is generically (EU) called TIN:
Exactly. In Finland (as in the US obviously) knowing someone's ID can be used to cause damage to the person. You can do some business in the name of the person, because it is generally but falsely assumed that knowing the number is an authentication method.
In Germany, because the tax number is only used for income taxation. Already for other taxes, like sales tax, property tax etc. another number is used. I am not ware of any obvious way how one could misuse someone else's income tax number. The income tax number is completely obscure, age of the person cannot be derived AFAIK.
I know that in Italy the tax number is used quite a lot. I could not buy a rechargable smart card for public transport, because I did not have the tax number. And when just for fun at a train ticket machine I tapped that I would like a receipt, it asked me for my tax number. Whether the number is used as an authentication method and could be misused in that context I have no idea.
Re: The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis
#103I never realised till now that American's SSNs were supposed to be kept secret. That's absolutely ridiculous. The idea of trying to keep the UK equivalent (National Insurance Number) secret is laughable. How can anything function when an important id number is also supposed to be known by very few people?
It's not a secret number, it's a unpublicized credential.
Any meaningful identity verification gets traced to an auditable event (ie your birth, immigration, etc) and one or more tangible thing s that attest to your identity.
SSN is definately important for credit, but know your customer laws are slowly making it less so.
Re: The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis
#104a federal id smart card would be a great solution, but people won't let it happen because it might be "the mark of the beast". I'm not joking. I have heard that more than once.
Because it is the "mark of the beast", just as SSNs or surveillance bureau's primary keys are. And no, I'm not joking either.
It's entirely sophomoric to trash a book of generational wisdom by taking its metaphors literally for use as strawmen. A actual "beast" was no more a part of their daily routine that it is of yours.
If identifying and cataloging people were against people's immediate interest, then it would actually not happen and it wouldn't be a concept worth mentioning. So the apparent fact that the practice looks fine and dandy to you is an indicator of exactly nothing! The problems manifest themselves on the scope of many generations, and true wisdom is to heed warnings from past failed societies rather than laughing them off.
(For the record, I'm an atheist).
Re: The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis
#105I never realised till now that American's SSNs were supposed to be kept secret. That's absolutely ridiculous. The idea of trying to keep the UK equivalent (National Insurance Number) secret is laughable. How can anything function when an important id number is also supposed to be known by very few people?
The scheme was designed in 1935 as a way of identifying people enrolled in the then-new Social Security program (hence the name), and was gradually made a de facto national ID number over the intervening decades as the increasing scale of national population and economic activity prompted a desire for greater legibility to facilitate management and taxation. Greater legibility, management, and taxation are values not…
What problem does a national ID solve that a driver's license with linkage to a birth certificate and photo database with facial recognition will not?
Identity theft is about the regulatory environment. Banks are allowed to quickly vet credit customers, and consumers hold the bag for cleaning up the mess.
Re: The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis
#106I don't know. I found the argument convincing that even naming the breach "identity theft" is beginning to push responsibility away from Equifax and make it seem a personal problem of those affected, or a general societal phenomenon. When in reality it's just Equifax's poor security practices. As you probably know, the exploit basically is using Java's ability to dynamically execute code from JVM bytecodes (supplied…
> I found the argument convincing that even naming the breach "identity theft" is beginning to push responsibility away from Equifax and make it seem a personal problem of those affected, or a general societal phenomenon. When in reality it's just Equifax's poor security practices.
The thing being hidden isn't the surveillance bureau's poor security practices, but the banks who actually extend credit. Banks want to pretend that they can define identity as equivalent to a few bits of public information, and when they're defrauded blame innocent bystanders instead of their own broken abstraction.
Re: The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis
#107Something non-US folks don't always get about the US -- in a lot of ways, the US is more analogous to the EU than it is to any one country of Europe. That is to say, the US Government is the national entity, but quite a lot of power is still held in the states. There is a 200+ year wariness of federal power here. One of the ways this manifests itself is that identity is established and maintained largely by the state…
> National IDs are a nonstarter politically in the US. One side thinks it is undue encroachment on local rights, and the other side thinks requiring ID disenfranchises the poor and undocumented. That's the tl;dr version of course -- reality is more nuanced.
As a non-American, this doesn't really make much sense to me. There's already a national ID, the Social Security card. It's just a really really terrible form of national ID.
Re: The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UK is also heavily resistant to any sort of national ID scheme, and so National Insurance numbers (our equiv of SSN) are also a sortof proxy ID for people in work etc. But the difference is we don't pretend they are secret. In other words: we use it as a primary key, but we don't assume its a shared secret.
So let's say you want to apply for a bank loan or credit card online, or look up information about yourself on a government website - how do you prove you're you? Or is this simply not possible in the UK without visiting a bank branch etc.?
Here in Argentina you sign the docs and write your name and in case of problems they'll analyze the signature and handwriting.
Re: The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis
#109Something non-US folks don't always get about the US -- in a lot of ways, the US is more analogous to the EU than it is to any one country of Europe. That is to say, the US Government is the national entity, but quite a lot of power is still held in the states. There is a 200+ year wariness of federal power here. One of the ways this manifests itself is that identity is established and maintained largely by the state…
> National IDs are a nonstarter politically in the US. One side thinks it is undue encroachment on local rights, and the other side thinks requiring ID disenfranchises the poor and undocumented. That's the tl;dr version of course -- reality is more nuanced. As a non-American, this doesn't really make much sense to me. There's already a national ID, the Social Security card. It's just a really really terrible form of…
Social Security card is made of paper, has nothing but the number and your name, and 99% of people in the US have lost, destroyed, or never carried it to begin with. Stupid paper card even says "Do not laminate" but mine is laminated and thus intact after 40 years.
SS#'s were never meant to be personal ID numbers or national ID numbers. This was a big thing when they were introduced. Unfortunately, companies use them ALL the time. There should be a law against companies asking for your SS#.
Anyway, nothing about American government or the American people makes sense. We're probably the most irrational, stupidest electorate in the world. I mean, look who we elected president!
Re: The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The private university I went to used to issue student emails that were first three letters of last name followed by last four digits of social security number. It always seemed odd to me. Years later, they've switched and we don't have that problem any more. Companies can generate a unique identifier without using SSN. Of course, the main problem is that they can't do authentication based on that identifier. So why…
SSN is the only reliable way to disambiguate duplicate names. Differentiating all the John Smiths by mailing address is too intractable, especially when you have JS Jr. and JS III living together. It is used to construct a primary key for the database.
Or just assign duplicates/everyone a generated unique/sequential number?