I don't know how common this is in other countries but in Norway we have a common system called BankID which is pretty much the de-facto way to identify yourself when applying for government services, bank loans or basically anything else "important". It usually consists of a two-factor authenticator issued by your bank, a password and your "birth number" (basically SSN) if you have all three as far as any bank or the government is concerned you "are" the person. However since it is so robust I don't think it can be exploited unless you royally fuck up. I wonder how the per capita identity theft cases in Norway are compared to the US because of this system, I would think much lower.