It never fails to amaze me that every tax and financial document I get displays only the last 4 digits of my Social Security number with the SOLE exception the 1099 I get from the Social Security Administration, which displays my entire number.
And further, Medicare cards also display their holders' entire SSNs, thereby putting seniors, who are most at risk of identity theft, at even greater risk.
Why isn't the government, too, required to protect Americans? (Yes, I've written to my elected officials.
You are probably too young to remember the vigorous debates in congress and in the press when the law was passed prohibiting the use of the social security number for a customer identification number. Medical records and tax records were specifically exempted from that law because of the absolute necessity of having a unique personal identifier. Medicare is NOT exempt from the requirements of that law. However, because of the immense burden and cost of re-issuing Medicare cards and changing all of the medicare health records, they were permitted to get away with adding a code letter to the SSN and saying that was sufficiently different to pass muster under the law. 🤔
At the same time the U.S. military, which prior to that point had its own system of unique identifying numbers, elected to switch to using the SSN with alpha prefix and suffix characters so that like the Medicare numbers it was technically different from the SSN although the SSN is a clearly identifiable component. 🤔🤔
Many institutions use a combination of first and last name and date-of-birth as a unique identifier, which usually is unique in a small enough population The larger the population the greater the odds of duplication. My name is not John Smith but at various times I have...
- been arrested because someone who worked for the same company I did was wanted by the police in another state.
- been denied a mortgage because a man in the same county with the same name had been assessed a multi-million dollar judgment for fraud
- had to use my middle name for a hospital admission becausee there was another patient in the same hospital with my first and last name and date of birth. (Only one of us survived to be released).
I am convinced...
- a single unique identifying number is by definition a financial and security risk
- an absolute unique identifier is essential to health and safety in modern society
- the requirements of 1 and 2 are at odds with one another
- the only plan I have heard of that might be more secure (an un-modifiable chip embedded in the body) has privacy and other implications that may well exceed the benefits
