51–60 of 472 posts
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act
[2] https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/dodging-the-thought-poli...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they have your address; birthday; and SSN a whole lot. Generally, they could apply for credit cards; loans; set something to bill to you; etc... Fortunately, it's getting harder without previous addresses or other verification methods. For non-Americans that don't know, our Social Security number is generally assigned at birth or when you become a citizen by the Social Security Administration. Social Security is a…
> It's the only number we all get, since not everyone gets a driver's license; ID; passport; or other identifier. Unfortunately, it's been used to identify us for everything, and until recently was typically in plaintext on most forms (medical; tax; student; etc...). I fail to see the problem with that. As you said, it's an identifier , like an username or your full name. There should be no issue with everyone knowin…
Can't the SSA just issue 330 million new social security numbers, and tell people to be more careful with them from this point forward?
The SSA specifically told people not to misuse SSNs this way and it seems like a poor use of taxpayer funding to spend billions bailing out businesses’ bad decisions, even if that was legal (Congress would have to specifically authorize it), since we’d be back to the same problem with five years. If we were going to do something, we’d make government ID include an NFC token for PKI purposes since public keys can’t be…
Login.gov gets us pretty far until NFC can get baked into credentials. Would love to see passport cards evolve into this [2], but again, lots of work and political will to make that happen. In the meantime, remote and in person proofing to bind IRL gov credentials to digital identity must do.
(As of December 31, 2023, over 111 million people have signed up to use Login.gov to date, with over 324 million sign-ins in 2023; this is ~1/3rd US population; no affiliation)
[2] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-pa...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they have your address; birthday; and SSN a whole lot. Generally, they could apply for credit cards; loans; set something to bill to you; etc... Fortunately, it's getting harder without previous addresses or other verification methods. For non-Americans that don't know, our Social Security number is generally assigned at birth or when you become a citizen by the Social Security Administration. Social Security is a…
> It's the only number we all get, since not everyone gets a driver's license; ID; passport; or other identifier. Unfortunately, it's been used to identify us for everything, and until recently was typically in plaintext on most forms (medical; tax; student; etc...). I fail to see the problem with that. As you said, it's an identifier , like an username or your full name. There should be no issue with everyone knowin…
Think of it as being the username and password. That's how many institutions have treated it for a long time.
And where is this information that this random group supposedly has? I have yet to see proof of that being real
For non-Americans (and Americans) that don't quite understand what SSN is and why it's a problem, CGP Grey [1] has a great (and short) video about the history and why it's not technically an identifier, but has become one. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus
The video doesn't quite get into the problem of identity theft, which is when someone uses your stolen creds to claim they are you, and then go on a shopping spree which may include buying a car under your name. You shouldn't be liable for debts incurred after having your identity stolen but proving that is a lot of work.
e.g. You get hauled into court for a lawsuit demanding the loan repayment, for a loan someone else used your name to get?
- It wasn’t me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they have your address; birthday; and SSN a whole lot. Generally, they could apply for credit cards; loans; set something to bill to you; etc... Fortunately, it's getting harder without previous addresses or other verification methods. For non-Americans that don't know, our Social Security number is generally assigned at birth or when you become a citizen by the Social Security Administration. Social Security is a…
> It's the only number we all get, since not everyone gets a driver's license; ID; passport; or other identifier. Unfortunately, it's been used to identify us for everything, and until recently was typically in plaintext on most forms (medical; tax; student; etc...). I fail to see the problem with that. As you said, it's an identifier , like an username or your full name. There should be no issue with everyone knowin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The video doesn't quite get into the problem of identity theft, which is when someone uses your stolen creds to claim they are you, and then go on a shopping spree which may include buying a car under your name. You shouldn't be liable for debts incurred after having your identity stolen but proving that is a lot of work.
I never really understood why the onus is on any person to prove they didn’t do something. Shouldn’t the shaggy defence be sufficient? e.g. You get hauled into court for a lawsuit demanding the loan repayment, for a loan someone else used your name to get? - It wasn’t me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_defense
"there were no email addresses in the social security number files. If you find yourself in this data breach via HIBP, there's no evidence your SSN was leaked, and if you're in the same boat as me, the data next to your record may not even be correct. " Seems like Troy is skeptical about this being a real full breach?
A lot of these data brokers hold wildly inaccurate information.
for (i = 0; i Earlier quoted context omitted.
my understanding is that there's a bit of a catch-22 with data removal - if you request that a data broker remove ALL of your information, it's impossible for them to keep you from reappearing in their sources later on because that would require them to retain your information (so they can filter you out if you appear again).
They could store a hash.
When you tell a data broker to delete all of the data about you, how can you be sure they get ALL of the data about you, including the ones where your name is misspelled or the DoB is wrong or it lists and old address or something? Even worse if someone comes around later and discovers the orphan data when adding new data about you and fixes the glitch, effectively undoing the data delete.
It's a catch-22 that if you want them to not collect data about you they need a full profile on you in order to be able to reject new data. A profile that they will need to keep up-to-date, which is what they were doing already.