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> how much data the federal, state, local, etc. governments leak on the average person; for example, federal citizen identifiers reused as consumer identifiers,
by JadeNB 10y ago
> how much data the federal, state, local, etc. governments leak on the average person; for example, federal citizen identifiers reused as consumer identifiers, that is SSN numbers.
Is it really the government doing this? It seems to me that it's businesses, not the government, that insist on using SSNs as consumer identifiers. While this drives me crazy, I'm not sure that it's reasonable to pin it on the government (which, essentially by definition, is the party that is intended to use them as identifiers).
EDIT: What delinka (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425976) said.
- hackuser 10y agoI've read that many states sell their drivers license databases, as one example.
- addled 10y agoExcept when businesses have to send information about a person to the government, in which case they have to use the government identifier to properly identify them. An example are employee records used for tax purposes.