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Comment by pdkl95 | Hacker News Reader

> How much is this connected to not having a real id card?

None. The credit reporting agency should be verifying any facts they intent to include in a report. If the are including unverified hearsay, the their report may be libel[1].

Also, your own ID card wouldn't fix someone else with either no ID or fraudulent ID doing something in your name. If the bank gave a loan to someone else, that's their problem, not yours.

[1] I'm aware that regulatory capture has granted the agencies immunity from slander/libel laws. Just because unethical behavior has been legalized doesn't make it the victim's responsibility to work around libelous claims.

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One problem is that when the bank fails to adequately bet whoever they gave a loan to, it becomes your problem until you can convince them that they made a mistake (hope you can afford a lawyer). A standard ID card with a photograph would help if it meant that nobody would accept anything else (utility bills, etc. are much easier to steal or forge) and it would transform online banking if we had something like OpenID/U2F which would work online.

The other problem is that without a reliable primary key, it's much easier for correct information about different people to be incorrectly mixed. While this is not as bad as, say, when it hits a sex offender database or terrorist watch list but it does happen and would go down dramatically if everyone could just use something like a SSN as the link instead of trying various fuzzy heuristics and hoping for the best.

If a bank in America gives a loan in your name that essentially is your problem until a sequence of things happen that require a fair amount of education to research and do yourself or the advice of a low end but real lawyer (which is dangerous to seek out among the ones that screw over the poor).

If you live in the US you should consider filing every block available to you so for the banks you don't use, you can start the discussions with asking why they were illegally pulling your credit record or giving credit without it.

In Europe, it looks like banks are petitioning to be allowed to verify identity over camera phones using an independent third party. That is still better than the US, since you can probably force them to retrieve that record of "you and your id" fairly early in a dispute.

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