this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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There must be a way to get a replacement, right?
Anyway, what's even the point of SSN? European asking.
identification for like taxes and whatnot
what do y'all have over there?
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.
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.
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.
German here. We have a social security number which just serves its original purpose of identifying you for social security.
We have a tax number for taxes.
And we have a national ID card for most other purposes where you'd need to identify yourself.
It even comes with a neat feature where you can use it for online identification and it only reveals just as much information as needed (like are you over 18 or not).
That is neat, we need that
If I understand it correctly, a number uniquely identifying a human, then in Slovakia that would be "rodné číslo" - "birth number".
E.g.:
891117/1236
Which is YYMMDD/(that day's sequential number of birth)(checksum digit)
For women the month (MM) has 50 added to it.
Gendered date formatting?? panicked software engineer noises
Same. I was stunned into silence for about a minute, as my mind was flooded with all the corner cases that arise from something like that.
Hmm, that's nice and easy to remember. The inbuilt gender is a bit dated though.
And employers prefer them for W-4 forms (which is also about taxes, granted).
it was not the initial intent to be a multipurpose national id number, but it turned out to be that way because states rights and stuff
It's just a form of national identification number. It's assigned at birth, and is used as a means to legally identify an individual for government purposes (taxes, benefits, acquiring licenses and other forms of identification). They exist in Europe as well, they are just called something different than SSN. Not every country uses them, though.
Not assigned "at birth," assigned when you or your parents apply for one. That normally, these days, happens shortly after birth, but it has not always been that way, and it is not an obligation.
That is fair, I gave an over-simplification. But generally it will be part of the overall process.
Very easy to get a replacement, as far as things go. I'll assume the office doesn't require an appointment (it did during covid). Just go in, wait, talk to a clerk, explain either you never had one or lost it (I think there's a higher charge for losing it over never having had one), pay a reasonable fee, get new card mailed to you. Out of several government things I've had to do, getting a card was simple.
There is. I had to replace mine due to a flood.
https://www.ssa.gov/number-card/replace-card
It's an annoying process to get one buts it's pretty easy. It's a lot of sitting and waiting in lines