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Comment by Cider9986 | Hacker News Reader

No, but what would you do if it's a government required service?

The IRS wanted a full 3d scan of my face to prove identity AFTER I already had a working account used every year for the past 3+ years.

They asked for feedback after I canceled the login, I gave very candid feedback in a form.

Then they asked if I would give an interview.

You know why I wanted to log in? To claim a $7 refund.

They ended up mailing it.

I wonder if the identity requirements are lowered if you owe them money?

Yes actually, I've seen both. It makes sense because nobody would impersonate me to give them money.

I also make sure they never owe me. Otherwise I get delayed money, ID thieves have another reason to target me, thieves might actually get it, and the IRS might not give it. And the last thing happened to me once with a large refund, for a year, because of a pure logistics error on their end that took me a ton of effort to get them to fix, and it was kinda related to ID. Identity situation is much cleaner if I just pay the IRS.

Then you sign in using your eID which is both highly secure and tied to your personal identity. Government services don't need 3rd party are-you-a-human verification, not when your account is tied to your identity.

(this is from the Netherlands where you can use digID [0] to sign into government services and ID-bound 3rd parties like insurance, mortgages, pensions etc)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiD

I thought recently there was a kerfuffle about DigiD being tied to an American data farming company

Then I would opt not to use the computer for this task, and instead call, visit, mail, or fax the government agency.

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