Remember that there is no such thing as identity theft. There is just fraud. You weren't involved at all.
One million passports leaked online
71–80 of 264 posts
Re: One million passports leaked online
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure how it works in the EU, but in the US, most states have a "PMP" (prescription monitoring program) that tracks the sale of marijuana in many states (nevermind that its not an actual prescription, but it is a controlled substance) and viewable by your doctor back up to ~12 months or so. Most people don't know this however and think it works like alcohol sales where it's sold after ID verification and then…
EU is not a country and the laws covering illicit substances vary wildly between member states.
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Re: One million passports leaked online
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
10 years after I took the ACT, I received a letter from a university that I never went to, saying my SSN was leaked. WHY THE F**k ARE THEY HOLDING ON TO THAT 10 YEARS LATER!?!?!? Of course now I know better than to give out my SSN to anyone who asks for it, but I didn't know that as a teenager. Until stupid s**t like this becomes illegal, it will just keep continuing.
The real answer? In case you want to retrieve your test scores 10 years after you took it. They need some way to uniquely identify you. Sure, they could have given you a specific test taker ID, but what if you lost that? They could have created a way for you to log in with an e-mail address, but what if you changed e-mail addresses? You might think "Why would I need my test scores from 10+ years ago?", but my wife ju…
Identify the student by full name, dob, date of admission, career, etc. It takes 5 minutes instead of one.
The problem here is using a username (the ID) as a password (security check)
Re: One million passports leaked online
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure how it works in the EU, but in the US, most states have a "PMP" (prescription monitoring program) that tracks the sale of marijuana in many states (nevermind that its not an actual prescription, but it is a controlled substance) and viewable by your doctor back up to ~12 months or so. Most people don't know this however and think it works like alcohol sales where it's sold after ID verification and then…
EU is not a country and the laws covering illicit substances vary wildly between member states.
How’s that any different than the US? States determine what they can do.
Re: One million passports leaked online
#75[dead]
Re: One million passports leaked online
#76> Note what happened. A high-value credential—a passport—was used in an ancillary low-value authentication system: ID verification for cannabis dispensaries. And it’s the low-value system that got hacked, putting the high-value credential at risk. Why do these systems hold onto user's data post verification?
I'm not sure how it works in the EU, but in the US, most states have a "PMP" (prescription monitoring program) that tracks the sale of marijuana in many states (nevermind that its not an actual prescription, but it is a controlled substance) and viewable by your doctor back up to ~12 months or so. Most people don't know this however and think it works like alcohol sales where it's sold after ID verification and then…
It's not like this in USA for cannabis. States with medical programs issue medical cards and the dispensary uses that as the only form of ID. For adult-recreational the dispensary can choose their ID verification system. Many use ID scanners connected to their online POS provider. The State run system doesn't track retail sales to an individual.
Re: One million passports leaked online
#77> Note what happened. A high-value credential—a passport—was used in an ancillary low-value authentication system: ID verification for cannabis dispensaries. And it’s the low-value system that got hacked, putting the high-value credential at risk. Why do these systems hold onto user's data post verification?
I have a story about this, although it's a bit convoluted and not entirely related. But it does showcase low-value usecase compromising a high-value auth mechanism. I was working on a project, client is a Real Estate agency, they use a CRM where they upload houses and it in turn uploads it to various sites like Zillow. We needed a list of their listed houses, so we wanted to use that data source instead of making a C…
This is a really great story. It is super short and understandable, and nails the point that just falling into the default case of authenticating everything can hurt security. If someone was teaching a some sort of software engineering seminar, they should totally steal it.
Re: One million passports leaked online
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure how it works in the EU, but in the US, most states have a "PMP" (prescription monitoring program) that tracks the sale of marijuana in many states (nevermind that its not an actual prescription, but it is a controlled substance) and viewable by your doctor back up to ~12 months or so. Most people don't know this however and think it works like alcohol sales where it's sold after ID verification and then…
It's not like this in USA for cannabis. States with medical programs issue medical cards and the dispensary uses that as the only form of ID. For adult-recreational the dispensary can choose their ID verification system. Many use ID scanners connected to their online POS provider. The State run system doesn't track retail sales to an individual.
Medical marijuana is linked to the PMP in my state.
https://azcir.org/news/2025/04/10/are-az-medical-marijuana-c...
Re: One million passports leaked online
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
10 years after I took the ACT, I received a letter from a university that I never went to, saying my SSN was leaked. WHY THE F**k ARE THEY HOLDING ON TO THAT 10 YEARS LATER!?!?!? Of course now I know better than to give out my SSN to anyone who asks for it, but I didn't know that as a teenager. Until stupid s**t like this becomes illegal, it will just keep continuing.
The real answer? In case you want to retrieve your test scores 10 years after you took it. They need some way to uniquely identify you. Sure, they could have given you a specific test taker ID, but what if you lost that? They could have created a way for you to log in with an e-mail address, but what if you changed e-mail addresses? You might think "Why would I need my test scores from 10+ years ago?", but my wife ju…
I think the issue here is that it was the university, not ACT. ACT has a valid reason for holding it. A university he never went to does not.
Re: One million passports leaked online
#80Much as passports are very important for proving identity etc, people who travel have had their passport scanned, photographed or photocopied by pretty much every hotel they've stayed in. I'm not sure the shoebox in the backroom in Koh Samui with the photocopies in constitutes good storage hygiene protocols. How that doesn't turn into rampant identity theft I don't know, or maybe it does? Not, happily, for me... yet.
the whole "not being an automatable remote sql injection away from everything" quality of physical objects grants a filing cabinet a tremendous amount of inherent security compared to anything digital.
Nothing says “we’re watching you” like the wifi password at the hotel I stayed at in Shanghai being my passport number.