this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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I understand social security to mean paying into a state pension, a national healthcare service, and provision of education.
What does social security mean in the American context?
Irrelevant to the topic at hand. This is a social security card, which displays your social security number, which is the closest thing we have to a national ID. It is used for all things financial and for identity verification & background checks. If someone gets your name, address, and social security number, you can be in for a real bad time.
Which is unfortunately easy to do. There are some of those search sites that include SSNs on them. Haven't seen one that detailed in a few years, but still. Just today I found a site that had addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and relatives. All accurate and all freely available, no registration required.
To add to the problem, social security was never meant to be an national ID number. It was just really useful for a whole lot of things. However, numbers are handed out sequentially, not randomly. So take your SIN and add or subtract one from it and that is another person's SIN. Knowing just a few simple things about a person can reveal most if not their entire SIN.