mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
[personal profile] mdlbear

From The Blog of M'Gath we get a link to this article by Michael Tiemann decrying the fact that AT&T wants your SSN so they can do a credit check before they activate your iPhone. I hate to tell you, folks: this is nothing new. They've been requiring a SSN to set up an account for as long as I can remember.

We have a national ID -- we've had it for half a century or more. It sucks, but I don't think it's practical to put that particular genie back in the bottle. The best we can do is patch the system so that identity theft isn't a simple matter of getting hold of a single number that's not all that hard to obtain.

No, I don't know how to do that.

Date: 2007-07-05 04:39 pm (UTC)
madfilkentist: Photo of Carl (Carl)
From: [personal profile] madfilkentist
I know it's nothing new. But being able to use someone else's SSN and have it just go through is scarier than average. And it's a danger you can't avoid by not using an iPhone; it sounds as if someone could just guess numbers till one works.

Personally, I use a Tracfone, which doesn't require any information at all from me.

Date: 2007-07-05 10:53 pm (UTC)
mithriltabby: Happy bunny BLEAH (Bleah)
From: [personal profile] mithriltabby
The thing we need to drill through a great number of heads is that identification is not authentication. There’s nothing wrong with having a nine-digit number to identify one’s self, but there needs to be more than that to verify that you’re the person associated with that number.

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Page generated 2025-06-16 12:05 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios