All U.S. Social Security numbers may need to be changed following a massive breach that is already being investigated as a national threat
www.ecoticias.com
A whistleblower warns a mishandled cloud copy of Social Security data could put millions at lifelong risk and force SSNs to change.
  • pageflight@piefed.socialEnglish
    19·
    2 days ago

    DOGE’s doing, in case anyone wondered.

    Borges alleges that a little-known federal tech team called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, copied the government’s master Social Security database into a cloud system that lacked normal oversight.

    • gtrcoi@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      That’s what I was wondering as someone from another country. The answer is ofc because Americans are dumb af and constantly shooting themselves in the foot when fighting against “big” government. SSNs were supposed to be for just one thing, but because there weren’t unique identifiers for other things (healthcare id, tax id, welfare id, etc) every one just started using SSNs as a kind of defacto national id when it was never designed to be that. SSNs lack biometrics like photo verification for example.

      To fix this they either have to actually create a more robust national id, or break it up into a bunch of area specific ids. Americans would likely complain about either option. My country does the latter, I imagine a lot of other countries do so as well.