Do we know if the system was compromised, or if the thieves just had access to the personal information of those taxpayers?
You'd think we'd have a better system by now than a short-ish unique number which never changes during your lifetime as the key for much of your financial / credit-related authorization.
http://securekey.com/press-releases/securekey-technologies-w...
SecureKey IIRC is used by Canada. USPS is in a unique position in that they have a ton of employees literally who can verify mailing addresses by brute force. Every day (except holidays). Rain, Snow or shine.
Having USPS in charge of the US's future "online identity" would be a good way of transforming the ailing agency and giving them a very useful purpose that only USPS can do. There's a lot of win/win potential here.
It's too bad their hands are so tied by Congress (and a malicious one at that - having to pay pension fund 75 years early)... they might have made this move a decade or so earlier.
In the more mundane act of fraudulently bypassing the IRS's trivial security to steal a tax return… thieves got me, probably as a result of Anthem's inadequate security. The thieves didn't even have the courtesy to pay what I owed! I say you file my tax return, you take your chances.
The maddening part, aside from the scramble when the April 14th filing from the tax people failed, is that no one in law enforcement is the slightest bit interested in enforcing the law.
Especially since they get passed all around like that's not the case by employers, insurers, creditors, etc, etc.
"We can assign a different number only if:
* Sequential numbers assigned to members of the same family are causing problems;
* More than one person is assigned or using the same number;
* A victim of identity theft continues to be disadvantaged by using the original number;
* There is a situation of harassment, abuse or life endangerment; or
* An individual has religious or cultural objections to certain numbers or digits in the original number. (We require written documentation in support of the objection from a religious group with which the number holder has an established relationship.)"
https://faq.ssa.gov/link/portal/34011/34019/Article/3789/Can...
The problem is it wasn't a designed system, it just came about by itself slowly over time. Social security numbers were never designed to be used in any way outside of social security.