Hackers may have stolen the Social Security numbers of all Americans. Here's what to know.

Maybe it's time to move on from using SSNs for security? We have someting similar in Sweden - "person numbers". If I call the tax authority and ask for someone's "person number" they will tell me. They're not secret in any way, and thus not used as some form of authentication either.

It's a massive pain in the ass, but every American should freeze their credit with the 3 agencies. Their websites are shit, they will sign you up for credit card ads no matter what you click, and every bit of the process will make you seethe with rage at how fucked and incompetent the whole system is. But go do it anyway.

I did it last year after the state DMV was hacked and lost every personal detail for basically everyone in the state who drives. It was real nice not having a loan taken out in my name a few months later when Experien called me out of the blue to ask if I really wanted to unfreeze.

I also did have to legit take out a loan later and it was easy. Just call one of the agencies and do a temporary unfreeze for 24 hours. Amazingly, they let you unfreeze to take out more loans very simply. Wonder why it's so hard to freeze in the first place? Almost like they don't give a shit who's creating the debts as long as some poor somewhere can be held to account for it.

Throw it on the pile of data breaches affecting me (and most Americans).

I don't know why I even bother lowering my voice when I have to give my SSN to someone. You could probably just google it anyway.

Where’s my check

The recommendation in the article was to freeze my credit reports. Fucking awesome. Equifax locked me out for 24 hours trying to access my account and Experian won't even let me access my account because their website is apparently unable to text me a four-digit code. Now I have to call and deal with customer service for both of them. At least TransUnion let me do it almost immediately.

In the sense of "Simpsons did it!":

Equifax did it first.

Sure wish the massive corporate incompetence and malfeasance causing huge data leaks multiple times over the years would get mentioned every time one of these stories comes up.

Hackers did blah, this WOULD ALMOST matter, but!

We need to start redirecting some of those board bonuses and CEO dollars back into infrastructure to actually secure this shit as a required responsibility and stop places from being allowed to request personal information they shouldn't have.

The past addresses thing is kind of spooky. I once got a bequest of stock options from the company I worked for and they were claimable online. One of the ways in which they verified my identity was to have me pick out actual addresses I'd lived at in the past (one of them more than 15 years prior) from a list containing other addresses. Somebody with access to a list of my past addresses might have been able to claim my fifty grand worth of options before I did.

Social Security Numbers are such a weird thing. Over here we've got an official rijksregisternummer that you get assigned at birth by the state and can be used to identify you. For some reason the USA decided that something like this is against their Freedoms ©®™, but when an agency gave people numbers for something completely different, that was never build to identify everyone in the country, everyone decided this is great to identify everyone in the country, so now everyone uses this system for something it was never built for.

All my credit reports are frozen because of the Equifax hack. Already went through all that years ago.

All your shit was already out there. Might as well fuck up your credit before somebody else does.

Jokes on them! They probably already had mine from the Move-It hack.

Checkmate hackers.

that provides background checks for employers, investigators and other businesses that want to check people's backgrounds.

Great editing once again brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department!

Good luck with my credit score, hackers.

Can we just pass a law or act that allows a person to discharge any debt they deem fraudulent? Like if it is known the person had their data leaked and they are signed up for something sketchy we should be able to legally and for free dispute that account/charge/service and have it stricken from our life. To prevent someone from just taking advantage of it though it should also automatically change your SSN or other personal ID number and freeze other accounts that are legit until they are paid in full. Most people would need to use this service at most once in their lifetime.

If this is Wells Fargo making more fake credit cards and charging them in their clients names I’m going to be hangry

Looks like I’m not alone this year.

Hey, good thing I already got my personal information stolen from my doctor’s office or something so I already have a year’s free credit monitoring with alerts etc. 🙂‍↕️

Why have this insecure system if security is right in the name! /j

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