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Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

I'm from Italy. When I change the place where I live I declare the new address and before they update my data an officer comes and checks that I really live there. They can get in and check that's not an empty house and I'm only pretending to live there, if they want to. The check is usually nothing more than peeking through the door though.

It seems an easy task to perform.

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Wow that's creepy even for me, who lived for many years in Turkey. In Turkey, the only check is a reference from someone who is already registered in that address. All this can be done online, you declare your new address from turkiye.gov.tr and someone who's registered in that address can approve your declaration.

Do you know that in UK they don't even have such a registry? The government doesn't know where you live(at least officially) and when you need to apply for something that requires proof of address they would use bank statements on your name sent by mail to that address.

I wonder how do you feel about it? Do you think that the Italian approach is better? Why would the government has to know where you live for sure? Is it to prevent benefit frauds?

No idea, it's been like that since forever AFAIK. At least it solves a lot of problems (you just show your photo id) and basically everybody you have a contract with would know that information anyway, utilities, banks, etc.

Edit: there is a difference between the place you live and the place you are registered into. Example: a student is registered at parents' home and goes to study at a university in another city. He rents a room there. He has a contract there and the landlord must notify that the student lives there (since the terrorism laws in the 70s) but the student is still registered and votes at the city of his parents unless he registers at the other city.

This is common also for workers. Maybe they live for years in a city (and the state knows) but they are still registered on their home one.

In the UK we have the electoral register. In order to vote, you need to be registered to it. The government most definitely does use it, as do credit scoring agencies and identitity verification services.

A lot of places do accept bank statements as a backup if you are not on the electoral roll.

That sounds wildly inefficient.

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