Someone recently suggested the 'nuclear' option of making everyone's social security number public and forcing all institutions to figure out a better model. This may be too extreme but something like that may be necessary
It's like requiring everyone's username to double as their password. It is seriously broken system, something else has to be figured out.
Reminds me of the old joke:
Store Cashier: If you'll just give me your SSN, I'll sign you up for our rewards program.
Customer: Can you keep a secret?
Store Cashier: Of course!
Customer: So can I.
why is it that the most important piece of identification you receive in your life, that you also need to keep forever, is printed on a crappy piece of paper???
To make matters worse, I had my username wrong, and so they helpfully told me "my" SSN, which was someone else's.
We live in a world where I have an 8 digit alphanumeric password protecting my weather preferences, but nothing protecting my credit.
buys some socks from the gap
cashier: may I have your number?
me: why on earth do you need that? People actually answer you when you ask them that?
As a German citizen, I find this whole matter very weird. I don't understand the need for the social security number system you have over there.
Names don't work because there are many people with the same name, and besides, they are alphabetic. Phone numbers occasionally transfer to others, as do physical addresses, etc. A Social Security number is always unique to its possessor (theoretically) and, for most adults, is available immediately in memory.
As such, it's become a popular "customer ID", as it were, in a lot of systems. If you assign each individual their own ID, they will forget it and mix it up with other IDs from other places, so an SSN is easy for everyone involved.
The problem is that people assume that an SSN is exclusive knowledge and use it as an authenticator -- when something is a universal identifier that you must write on many documents and give to many people (usually along with all other personal stats like address, phone, names, etc.), it just isn't reasonable at all to think that that can function secretly.
When asked for an SSN, a lot of people don't refuse because they imagine the fight would be fruitless and they'd be denied access to the thing they were trying to get. Some people don't understand much about SSNs or how easy it is to steal identities with them, so they don't mind giving it out. There are certain places where an SSN is legally required (for instance, opening a bank account) and sometimes it's hard to know if you're obligated to give the info or not.
Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if the SSN were used merely as a user ID and there was an authenticator required in each case, but as it is now, in most cases, you can walk in with an SSN and a few widely published data like name and address, and obtain all kinds of loans and accounts from all kinds of places in the name of the SSN's registered owner, because people assume that only the real owner is able to know the SSN. It's this assumption that is responsible for our difficulties.
Who, precisely, is going to return printer paper?
And besides, maybe you got the wrong size for your printer?
I usually always give out my phone number (I am a geographer, like I was excited when the census came.) and I have never had calls from the GAP or other stores solicitating anything.
Take off the tinfoil hats and help us geographers!
I've always worried that enemy forces would capture our troops, steal their identities, and then ruin their credit.
Anyway, I have access to the SSN of just about everyone in the army over the last five years. The do give the special forces people substitute SSN numbers but other than that it's fairly easy information to get access to if you if you are doing any sort of analysis of army trends.
When I started grad school they used SSN as the ID number too. I went to the registrar and asked them to change mine. They said they couldn't do it because, as a TA, I was considered an employee and they "had to" use my SSN. You can imagine I wasn't happy.
As the talk began, the presenter passed around a sheet and asked everyone to sign in - with their name, school, and social security number.
It made it halfway around the big conference hall, and halfway through the talk, before someone finally raised their hand and asked about the incongruity of being at a talk about the importance of keeping SSN's secret, while being asked to sign in with them.