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Comment by schainks | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget, if you want to change your social security number, here's the process[1]:

1. Prove you meet the conditions for changing it (you must show proof of identify _theft_ and how it disadvantages you)

2. Show up at an office, in person, with original documentation.

Sounds like a great startup idea: make fixing 143M citizens' identities as easy as ordering a pizza. Or create the Uber for people who will stand in line for you at the Social Security office.

[1]: https://faq.ssa.gov/link/portal/34011/34019/Article/3789/Can...

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Problem is data theft doesn't meet the criteria of identify theft. You can't change your SSN until you have proof of identity theft, not a data breach.

I'm typically not particularly paranoid, but if a state actor wanted to destabilize the US economy, increasing the rate of fraud via identity theft sounds like a great way to do it. Crank it up just enough to hurt the economy, but not quite enough to break the identity status quo....

The leak of this data basically enables a denial of service attack against parts of the economy dependent on personal identity.

I know this is somewhat off point, but there's a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_division happening here when considering risk - individually, my chance of impact is low (I think?), but as a society, the risk of impact is very high.

I think that makes it worth replacing everyone's SSN, at a minimum.

The problem is that SSNs are not secret to begin with. They are a unique identifier that is in hundreds of systems already. They provide no security. We need another common system to confirm people's identities.

Cool idea. YMMV with this, though. The government accidentally assigned me someone else's SSN (had the same first/last name as me and was born in the same hospital) and it took about 2 years to rectify.

How did you find out?

Presumably, sho'he requested a credit report to verify success and saw a lifetime of someone else's credit interactions (different car, mortgage, credit cards). <edit for irreverent trailer : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnouJoQs52c />

The other person was able to use his/my SSN to "mistakenly" withdraw a large amount of money from my bank account. That was what first tipped me off.

The first and last name may be a coincidence, but depending on how old you are the "same hospital" is likely not. SSNs are generated based partially on geographical area, so if that's the only or the biggest hospital in the area, the likelihood of getting a number from the same hospital is substantially higher.

If you have someone's SSN, you can pretty easily deduce what city they were born in unless they are very young (they switched this process recently).

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