The problem with the SSN is it is an identifier and a secret. It's a username and password in one, you can't change it and you need it for any substantial fina

The problem with the SSN is it is an identifier and a secret. It's a username and password in one, you can't change it and you need it for any substantial financial transaction. Ideally, we'd have both a public username and a private password that we could change for our financial identification. This would eliminate most of the problems with these big data breaches. The backup for resetting a forgot password would be to show up in person and do some sort of biometric scan. Biometrics have to be done in person at a government office though since they aren't secret and cannot be changed. There shouldn't be an over the wire API for biometric identification because then you've got the SSN problem all over again, a combined username and password that's even more public than an SSN that can't be changed.