Hacker News Reader

The problem is that SSN's are treated like a private key. If somebody has that private key, and some basic information about you, they can basically impersonate you electronically.

Meanwhile countries like Estonia use an electronic card reader with a PIN to verify digital identity, making it nearly impossible for somebody to impersonate you. Using this Estonian system, you can tell anybody your personal code ID.

View on HN

In Italy the personal id is computed from name(s), surname, date and place of birth (state of birth if born abroad) and a check digit. Collisions are pretty rare (one every few tens of thousands of people), so it's pretty much a public piece of information.

Electronic identification is available on three levels: id+password, id+password+OTP (the most common), id+password+smart card (everybody has one, but in practice it is only used by officers nowadays). Getting a password is free and takes about 15 minutes plus a trip to the post office. It works pretty well, and underneath it's just SAML2 so everyone can use it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com