, 2008-02-13
Americans lost over 45 billion dollars in identity-related fraud in 2007. Reports are so commonplace that we've actually become de-sensitized to them. "200,000 victims reported..." "500,000 victims reported..." Even figures into the millions don't seem to faze us anymore. And that is a Bad Thing.
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The problem is that SSN is a loginid and
password, all rolled into one. Of course,
a loginid must be public, and a password must
be secret, so SSN necessarily fails in some way.
The solution, IMHO, is to publish ALL SSNs
and names on a public web page. Make them
fully public, which would make them like
public loginids. The fact they are public
would make them useless as passwords, and also
useless for identity theft. The banks, et al
would then have to come up with some better
form of authentication credentials. But at
least your password would be different from
a public id.
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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/465/34927#34927