Contract signings, online court service, title changes, etc should not be valid without an offline record examiner who affirms under threat of perjury that the parties involved are who they claim (or are claimed to be).
The existing system isn't foolproof but, by and large, it works perfectly well. If the transactions in TFA truly were fraudulent, no court is going to hold her liable. The bigger problem here is a US court being happy to issue ex parte judgments for someone who should have been trivially contactable.
That's a very good idea.
You're not using those words correctly.
I just tried to set up an eBay account to buy an exhaust part. I created the account, sent the seller a message and twenty minutes later, I got a notification from eBay that I (and anyone from my household) was permanently banned because I was a "threat to the eBay community".
I haven't been on eBay for ages, and as far as I know, was certainly never threatening to anyone on or off eBay. Nobody at eBay would tell me what had gone wrong -- in fact, as soon as I asked what the problem was, they said that they had to "end the call now".
Maybe if I had signed up in person, they could let me know what crimes I'm supposed to have committed or at least save me a hour by not allowing the signup in the first place.
Was it a catalytic converter?
Is eBay salty about catalytic converters?
I’m moving away and selling some of our stuff that we can’t take with us. I have a spare 5G/LTE router that I thought I’d throw up on eBay as well as Facebook Marketplace.
I followed their onboarding process to the letter to create a listing, verify my email and mobile phone, add a bank account, etc.
About an hour later I got an email saying I’ve been “permanently suspended because of activity that we believe was putting the eBay community at risk”.
Apparently doing nothing but following their onboarding process is putting the community at risk. They also tell you that “this decision (that was made 100% by an automated system) was not made lightly”.
Get fucked, eBay.
Somehow this hasn't stopped the people selling empty PS5 boxes and knockoff handbags at all.
Yes.
If that would allow me to 100% regain control of a hacked account. The answer is yes.
You're saying like it's bad. It's not. In fact, it's wonderful.
I do, if the service involves hard identity/finance. Maybe where I'm from is odd, but you can't go into a neighborhood without tripping over a notary, there are mobile notaries, notaries in every white collar office etc. Not too inconvenient for a one time (per major action) event.
In Denmark we have a thing called “MitID” (MyID) which is basically a government login and which you can use to sign and also login to all kinds of things that need to confirm your identity (e.g. Phone subscription, taxes, 3DS verification for Credit Card transactions, etc).
It’s essentially 2FA, works by the site sending a confirmation to an app on your phone that is behind PIN code. The analog version is a paper slip with 100 lookup codes.
I am against government overreach yet these people really seem to want to change my mind.
National ID systems are such nonsense it is appalling there are people stupid enough to think this is a Good Thing.
Easy is NOT always better. The best things in life are definitely not free.
You would have to steal a username + phone + PIN code for phone + PIN code for MitID app.
If that happens, then it would also be trivial to unlink the app from that phone.
At no point in time would you be unaware of the theft here.
Contrast this to what happens in the US often: your personal info is leaked from the plethora of places it’s kept. Someone can now in perpetuity exploit your identity, or at the very least for a long time until you find out randomly.
Which system sounds better to you? I sure know that I’d prefer the first one.
I’d welcome any actual arguments against it, but you’ve not really presented any at all so far.
And when your phone is hacked then all three are up for grabs?
"Contrast this to what happens in the US often: your personal info is leaked from the plethora of places it’s kept."
And yes, totally never is your govt info leaked from the plethora of places it is kept. /s
The problem is not having govt information, the problem is having it kept on phones or entered on devices at all.
"I’d welcome any actual arguments against it,"
See the above. I dislike the automated exfiltration of my identifying information, and then being saddled with the "responsibility" for it. The solution is not to make it even more automated, but to generally never to accept any credential except as a revokable guarantee - doing business as a large corp you should accept the risk of fraud, and presume your clientelle are not who they say they are.
No.
Several trips to a government office, had to get a new set of ID, and wait weeks, all while there was important communications waiting for me on one of the dozens of subordinate government sites which were time sensitive but no one could provide me by an alternative method....
I am just waiting to hear the first story of someone going to prison because they couldn't get the message the tax man sent due to the tax man not letting them read the message....
I'm sure it happens, and I know the bar for becoming a notary public (official able to notarize documents) isn't that high, but I haven't heard about a ton of fraud where things were falsely notarized. I suppose accessible notarization is a positive thing, at least as long as fraud doesn't become a problem with the system.
I'm sure this is an unpopular idea on HN, but at least it's a way that our governments could use facial recognition/fingerprints/retina to reduce fraud.