this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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privacy

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[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

Because the US doesn’t have a federal identification card. At the state level you can use the id number of someone’s drivers license or state id for identifying them, which is marginally better since it changes with new id cards.

SSNs weren’t intended to be used for identification, but since there’s no other national option they effectively are.