privacy

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Every American's Social Security number, address may have been stolen in hack (www.fox5dc.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 month ago (15 children)

I'm pretty sure mine has been stolen a dozen times at this point. You should never assume your SSN is private information, but you should treat it as such to limit how many people have it.

The main issues here are:

applications for credit - freeze your credit at the major credit bureaus - Experian, Equifax, Transunion (bonus points for ARS and SageStream); make sure to unfreeze if you apply for a credit card or bank account though
impersonating - like applying for jobs and whatnot; this shouldn't directly impact you, and it's on the employer to make sure they know who they're employing
password resets - the best you can do is use MFA, though many services will allow resets with just personal information; I hope this changes, and some orgs are doing things to prevent abuse (e.g. Fidelity has voice recognition to cut down on support scams)

Honestly, we really need to stop using the SSN as identification.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

SSN as identification

Laughing in EU

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Eh, there are good parts to it as well. The only Federal ID I have is my passport, so there's no reason for them to track me across state lines. If I get pulled over in Oregon, they don't necessarily know my driving history in California or Nevada, so I'm more likely to get a warning than a ticket. If I had a Federal ID, they'd probably communicate across state lines more.

It's mostly bad, but with a silver lining.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm more likely to get a warning than a ticket

How about driving reaponsibly instead?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

I mean, I do. I've had three tickets over my entire driving career, each in a different state, and nothing in the last 10 years. I've also never been in an accident.

But I've been pulled over something like 10 times total for various reasons (registration expired, headlight out, speeding), and because I'm a responsible driver (no infractions or warnings in the prior year or two), I generally get warnings. If warnings were national, one or two of those might have turned into a ticket, and those would probably be fightable in court (but I'm not going to travel hundreds of miles to fight a $100 fine).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

How about understanding what an example is?

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