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It is treated like a secret, so if you come to know someone else’s Social Security number (thanks to a thriving black market you can buy up plenty of them) that’s enough for lenders to start giving you money and then chasing down that other person to pay them back. Are you starting to see an issue yet?

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Well that's another thing, I don't see why would you need to get rid of SSNs. You just need to add another layer that will confirm that you're the "owner" of your SSN. Seems pretty easy to do?

Agreed, except that nobody has done it. So SSN is your username and password anyways, despite everyone* knowing they’re all public knowledge at this point

*: except judges and juries, apparently

I didn’t propose getting rid of the SSN without replacing it with an actual, secure national ID. If that involves legacy SSNs still somehow whatever.

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