- Phone numbers
- social security numbers
Stop making personal information into digital ids because when it inevitably ends up in some kind of data breach. These companies all throw their hands up saying sucks to be you.
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
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Nah, man. Gotta get my $2.97 check.
Yeah, just generate a unique ID and ask only for the information you actually need.
What I hate is when they want you to store "secret" information like your mother's maiden name/ first pet name for later verifications. You know these are stored in plain text of course. My own damn government does this stupid shit, and they've had several hacks of PII including gun registrations because as far as I can tell, nobody competent works in government IT.
I choose random questions and store the random passwords that I use as answers in my password manager. It's also more secure because people can't just Facebook stalk you for answers.
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Bane of my life as about a year ago my dad switched his sim and immediately started pestering me about not being able to log into his accounts.
Yes he got rid of the old number completly and expected me to somehow make his logins work. This is still going on to this day when he complains to me something doesn't work it's because he's tied it to his old phone number.
Please. It is the most annoying part of trying to use some sites and I rather not give out my number to people who store important info in plain text files.
Yes. Don't forget your phone number will be exposed to the public when the business gets hacked.
Not if. When.
I don't want to treat phone numbers as an ID, but for some reason my customers will give their phone number to me online far more willingly than they'll cough up their email address, which is baffling only until you realize:
- Most people are technologically incompetent and are intimidated by the avalanche of crap they get in their email, and
- They never answer their phones anyway, so who cares?
I actually offer the option, because I don't give a rat's ass how people ignore me when I try to contact them. But when they place an order I at least need to be able to prove that I tried.
which is baffling only until you realize
I stopped being baffled when I realized most people are dumb as shit.
It's just a fact of life, and we either see it or we don't.
TBF many people are more intimidated by emails. My mum, for example, is in her 70s - she's okay with using a smartphone but she doesn't trust 'internet stuff'. Won't put her card details in, doesn't trust emails - which is fair, because a lot of emails are bullshit or scams. She grew up with telephones though and feels safer using them. Possibly why so many phone scams target older people. I've tried to educate her.
This attitude doesn't make people dumb. A bit ignorant, maybe, but I feel like 'dumb as shit' is a bit harsh.
When I give out my email, I always get spam, regardless of how many boxes I uncheck.
When I give out my phone number, sometimes I don’t
Of course that no longer makes sense since I have one phone number I can’t easily change, but give out uniquely generated emails that I can individually turn off
Internet security and internet privacy are only incompatible goals when combined with incompetency and shit user-exerience design.
On this question of verification, I don’t have a particularly foolproof solution, but maybe there just isn’t one.
I can criticize the modern web for a lot of things, but as long as we have situations where we want to check whether an account is a real person, as opposed to FarmingBot #295038, they need something. I'm not a fan of phone verification, but I'd only criticize it when we have alternatives.
I'd even be in favor of some kind of one-way algorithm by which a trusted real-person-identifying entity could tell a random third party site: Yes, this is a genuine human.
The technology has existed since the 80s.
X509 certificates would allow a government agency to sign a digital identity indicating that it's legitimate, would allow for remote revocation in the event of loss or theft, and can be easily integrated with every existing computer and browser.
An issued physical card would resemble a credit card, with a chip in it. Other physical form factors can take the shape of USB-devices which bundle the card and the reader into a single device.
In the real world:
Also https://www.cac.mil/Common-Access-Card/, if the Americans are skeptical.
I don't like the Austrian one being phone-integrated, but I understand why people would want that.
It's because the phone is a two-factor token that everyone has with them. With a secure processor being the hardware token and fingerprints or face scans biometrics. This makes it ideal for saving such sensitive data. I most frequently use it to digitally sign documents in a legally enforceable way.
The card you linked is similar, and a smart card was one of the previous versions of our system. The goal here was to make it universally accessible, and a smartphone is perfect for that.
https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/en/id-austria.html
That exists and is better than a phone number.
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I'm in a quest to find a good email provider that doesn't ask for a cellphone or another email address while creating an account, cock.li used to do this but now it's "getting back on its feet"
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I've been considering getting a pager or a burner phone just for this
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Theres an LTT video where one of the boys intercept all Linus' calls and texts, classic prank.
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