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Comment by Talyen42 | Hacker News Reader

the root of all of these kinds of scams is the same:

your "identity" is nothing more than your SSN/TIN, which is already on a thousand lists for sale on the dark web, and forever will be

there is literally no way to secure your identity if you've ever used a service requiring your SSN

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Am I correct in the understanding that in the US, lots of institutions/services/utility's ask for your SSN so it's common to be passing it across to folks, yet with this information someone could very easily take over your identity and cause much legal issues?

Yes.

Often your date of birth is also needed but, of course, that's not hard to acquire either.

yes, but that is okay because they keep your SSN and other personal private information in a secure computer. /s

And because the form has a lock icon. So you know it's safe.

Yes. Every company that uses it treats it like some kind of super secret password. Which is obviously BS, because you've already given it out to a bunch of other companies.

How very strange. Surely something will have to change soon with the Equifax hack etc.

We have something similar over here, an National Insurance number but it's only needed for employers or claiming benefits.

And there are very strict rules on the limited number of things you can use it for and one large UK company I worked at we got read the riot act that it was instant dismissal (gross misconduct) to break the rules.

That's what the SSN was supposed to be. But then banks and other non-government institutions started using it for identity verfication. Tragedy of the commons, basically.

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