4 ms·
In Sweden all citizens get a unique 12 digit number at birth (where the last char is a checksum). It is used for identification and you can call the tax agency
by pkz 8y ago
In Sweden all citizens get a unique 12 digit number at birth (where the last char is a checksum). It is used for identification and you can call the tax agency to find the ID of everyone. For the public sector it is a great value as a primary key but increasingly shops have started asking for it too. This means a lot of information is easy to aggregate from multiple sources and build profiles of people. I guess most people don't care.
- onion2k 8y agoWe have the same thing here in the UK (national insurance numbers) but one key difference to the US seems to be that we rarely need to disclose ours. You use it for tax related activities and that's all. I'm pretty sure if a shop asked for it most people would say no, because no one knows their own without looking it up, but also because it'd be really weird.
- olivermarks 8y agoRegarding @pkz comment about Swedish citizen numbers if you are in sweden and don't have one it is a nightmare getting anything accomplished - utilities, broadband etc, even if you are paying Swedish tax. Despite being EU members that federalization model fails if you don't have that number
- pkz 8y agoThis is true. Not having one makes regular life increasingly difficult. In many cases I am pretty sure it boils down to system designers actually not considering there could be customers without one. Software won't work without the ID number to connect data to. In healthcare hospital staff typically works around this by using "Mr twelve" - 1212121212 - which is syntactically correct with the correct checksum, but not identifying an individual.