4 ms·

Unless this recently change it is also standard practice in the military to write your SSN on your checks and show your SSN which is on your military ID to anyo

Unless this recently change it is also standard practice in the military to write your SSN on your checks and show your SSN which is on your military ID to anyone at the BX/PX. We had to say our SSN every time visiting the chow hall.

mcguire 5y ago
I hope it's changed; you're not supposed to do that.(TM) But the military operates in its own little world in some respects.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  It should be fine to broadcast SSN, the blame really falls to credit reporting companies and lenders treating it as a private and secure identifier. SSN's weren't designed to be secure, and after decades of leaks they certainly aren't now. Lenders have attempted to brand losses based on this as "identity theft" (putting onus on the person) rather than just "we failed to properly authenticate before handing this person our money". Time to stop subsidizing usurers by letting them get away with this. SSNs are effectively public, and are not secure identifiers.
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    When banks do KYC, they use: Name, address, DOB, and SSN. SSN is the "least" public of those. If all 4 are publicly available, it is trivial to impersonate you and launder money with your ID.
    - cwkoss 5y ago
      Banks should do better authentication so they aren't accomplices in related crimes.
dkarl 5y ago
I think it's a bit late to start treating SSNs as anything more than an essentially public piece of identifying information, like your name and address that you give out to anybody you buy anything from. I think every public school teacher I ever had handled my SSN. Sometimes my schools would, for convenience, post grades or exam results in the halls using only SSNs so that nobody could supposedly know what anybody else's grades were. Being a competitive sort, I always wanted to know who else was getting good grades, and it was easy to figure out. The idea that anybody is treating SSNs as sensitive information is a little bit alarming, because that cat is out of the bag.
ackbar03 5y ago
>We had to say our SSN every time visiting the chow hall. Just in case someone missed it? Lol this is pretty funny
Rebelgecko 5y ago
Up until like 2013, the front of a CAC card also had the owner's social security number (either in plaintext or as a barcode that could be read by a litany of phone apps)
warner25 5y ago
Things have changed. We received a "Department of Defense ID Number" at some point to use wherever SSNs were previously used on paperwork, computer systems, etc. Even ID tags ("dog tags") now have your DoD ID Number printed on them instead of your SSN. Any document with SSNs must be encrypted in transit and stored/processed only by systems with special accreditation and access controls for Personally Identifiable Information (PII). With that said, most of us gave up worrying about our SSN a long time ago. It definitely was printed everywhere and used for everything for a long time. And then the Office of Personnel Management breach happened in 2014-2015...
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  It is nice to see they are at least making an effort and moving in the right direction. This may be beneficial to those yet to join the services.
- egberts1 5y ago
  ugh, and I am still thinking of what are the perps doing with all those digitized fingerprints hashes.

mcguire 5y ago

I hope it's changed; you're not supposed to do that.(TM) But the military operates in its own little world in some respects.

cwkoss 5y ago
It should be fine to broadcast SSN, the blame really falls to credit reporting companies and lenders treating it as a private and secure identifier. SSN's weren't designed to be secure, and after decades of leaks they certainly aren't now. Lenders have attempted to brand losses based on this as "identity theft" (putting onus on the person) rather than just "we failed to properly authenticate before handing this person our money". Time to stop subsidizing usurers by letting them get away with this. SSNs are effectively public, and are not secure identifiers.
- geoduck14 5y ago
  When banks do KYC, they use: Name, address, DOB, and SSN. SSN is the "least" public of those. If all 4 are publicly available, it is trivial to impersonate you and launder money with your ID.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    Banks should do better authentication so they aren't accomplices in related crimes.

dkarl 5y ago

I think it's a bit late to start treating SSNs as anything more than an essentially public piece of identifying information, like your name and address that you give out to anybody you buy anything from. I think every public school teacher I ever had handled my SSN. Sometimes my schools would, for convenience, post grades or exam results in the halls using only SSNs so that nobody could supposedly know what anybody else's grades were. Being a competitive sort, I always wanted to know who else was getting good grades, and it was easy to figure out. The idea that anybody is treating SSNs as sensitive information is a little bit alarming, because that cat is out of the bag.

ackbar03 5y ago

>We had to say our SSN every time visiting the chow hall. Just in case someone missed it? Lol this is pretty funny

Rebelgecko 5y ago

Up until like 2013, the front of a CAC card also had the owner's social security number (either in plaintext or as a barcode that could be read by a litany of phone apps)

warner25 5y ago

Things have changed. We received a "Department of Defense ID Number" at some point to use wherever SSNs were previously used on paperwork, computer systems, etc. Even ID tags ("dog tags") now have your DoD ID Number printed on them instead of your SSN. Any document with SSNs must be encrypted in transit and stored/processed only by systems with special accreditation and access controls for Personally Identifiable Information (PII). With that said, most of us gave up worrying about our SSN a long time ago. It definitely was printed everywhere and used for everything for a long time. And then the Office of Personnel Management breach happened in 2014-2015...

LinuxBender 5y ago
It is nice to see they are at least making an effort and moving in the right direction. This may be beneficial to those yet to join the services.
egberts1 5y ago
ugh, and I am still thinking of what are the perps doing with all those digitized fingerprints hashes.