So according to census.gov we have 249,454,440 adults in the US as of July 1, 2016. The Equifax data leak compromised 143 million American's social security numbers and other information. That is roughly 57% of American's social security numbers being in public domain. It seems to me, it is time that we stop using Social Security numbers as a way of identifying people securely.
Now I am not going to pretend like I know what the best system would look like, but of course there is tried and true options around that are being used for this sort of thing all over the place. Such as the public/private key encryption scheme computers use to allow secure connections between systems (SSH). There is also of course, adding a password to your SS number and using the SS number as a "username" rather than a "password". Then there is 2-factor authentication that is widely used on internet services to prevent unauthorized use of said passwords.
I am hoping this post just brings more awareness to this issue and maybe someday soon, we'll see a change for the better.
Thanks for reading.
Submitted September 09, 2017 at 10:53PM by wingnu1 http://ift.tt/2jeKjIj
