this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Here is Germany it’s a bit more complicated:
We have a tax id that never changes and is assigned to every person at birth. It’s used for tax purposes. There was some opposition against it due to the centralized and permanent nature, so politicians are careful not to openly use it for other purposes. Behind the scenes it is on the way to become a universal id number for most government databases.
Then there is the tax number, which contains a number of the tax office in your region, so if you move you get a new one. Businesses also get them. This was the old system, which is still in use today.
Health insurance and pension have their own number schemes.
For identification with private parties (like banks) you use your id or passport, which have their own numbers. Owning either an id card or a passport is mandatory.
Sounds like our SSN is similar to your tax id. It’s assigned at birth and never changes.
The real problem is that for decades virtually every company and other entity that needed to uniquely identify a person used your SSN as well, despite the federal government saying it shouldn’t be used that way. For whatever reason they never enforced that, but just said “pretty please”… So now virtually everything from taxes to library books to bank accounts to utility bills are tied to our SSNs.
Similar to the Netherlands. We have a Citizen Service Number, which is used for government stuff (taxes, welfare, etc), employment, banking and loans and related things that require you to prove you're you.
For most other things, they write the document number of your official ID, which is not personal info, but very easily traced back to you by the police if you, say, don't pay for your hotel room.
Difference is though that random companies aren't allowed to use your number (unless for employment purposes). It's also just the identifier to your person, not identification. So providing this number is not enough to prove that you are you, by law at least. Additional identification such as your id are required.
True, but your saying this implies that this is NOT the case in the US?
It's not. Often the SSN alone is used for identification, which is why it's such a big deal if it leaks somewhere. And random companies can use it as well afaik, increasing the odds that it leaks online.
https://sites.psu.edu/rclaes/2020/10/15/rcl4-advertising-gone-wrong/ Here's an interesting article about a CEO of a company specialising in identity protection being so confident in his services, that he printed his actual SSN in an advertisement.
He had his identity stolen 13 times shortly afterwards.
Here in Romania we have a CNP (personal numeric code). It's assigned at birth and is explicitly a unique identifying number for each citizen. We must have a valid ID card with that number on us at all times.