LifeLock CEO’s Identity Stolen 13 Times (2010)

Oops.

$2,390 is a substantial amount of money for AT&T?

First, this article is from 2010.

Secondly, I wonder how bad his credit rating is given his record of stolen identity.

If I shall be evil for a moment, he could pretend to be scammed too.

But 13 times is perphas a little low. If the number has been known for three years (2007-2010), I would expect a dozen more scams though.

My third thought is what exactly do banks, credit unions and AT&T really do with SSN anyway? Do they talk to government servers and ask for history of me? I can understand banks and loaners might be interested in my IRS stuff or my court orders. I am not famiilair in this area. Could someone knowledgeable enlighten me?

Because if they do, I'd be crazy to suggest we could use crypto to solve stolen SSN number so that we can verify and replace a new ID.

Generate asymmetric key pair. The government API encrypts a challenge, bank decrypts it, solves the challenge, encrypts it and sends back. We can even go with passphrase! Or one-time token. I'm sleepy, but that's my crazy thought.

Actually, what good is my SSN anyway? Does it really mean who I am?