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This is the dangers of a too-powerful bureaucracy.

It's obvious that having the SSN as a single point of failure is exceedingly stupid, but our government bureaucrats refuse to do anything about it. You can't even request a new SSN, it's practically impossible to get a new one even if your identity is stolen.

The only thing holding us back is red tape, which is the dumbest reason of all.

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It's the danger of using something as a universal password (terrible practice #1) that's often stored in plain text (terrible practice #2).

I don't regularly deal much with federal government agencies beyond the IRS. Which ones let you do nefarious things if you only know a person's name, address, and SSN? The IRS doesn't, because they require you to know info from what you filed last year.

It probably seemed a lot more reasonable back when most people’s exposure to “password” was “the thing you needed to get into the speakeasy.”

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