THE EQUIFAX BREACH EXPOSES AMERICA’S IDENTITY CRISIS

Equifax’s revelation shows that 143 million Americans may have had their SSNs stolen (along with other sensitive personal information), security experts are pressing for a fundamental reassessment in how, and why, we identify ourselves.

The whole SSN as identifier regime needs to be scrapped,” says Eduard Goodman, global privacy officer at the identity theft protection firm CyberScout. “As we see more and more issues with the centralization of data, different schemes for different uses—biometrics for in-person interactions/transactions, some form of advanced encryption or blockchain technologies online. The solutions are already in front of our eyes.”

Having a few identifiers to keep track of would be more complicated for consumers than the current system, but it would have numerous benefits and would still be less to manage than the tangle of usernames and passwords that exist online.

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