Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address
As I&#x27;ve said before, it&#x27;s time to wipe the slate on SSN&#x27;s. They are de facto public anyway. A date should be announced when the entire database will be published. After that date all liability for fraud perpetrated using an SSN as a shared &quot;secret&quot; will be assigned to the party who accepted the SSN as &quot;authentication&quot;. That would solve the problem.<p>As an aside: When it comes to an authentication source to take the place of silly shared public &quot;secrets&quot; I think it would be great if the United States Postal Service &quot;pivoted&quot; into issuing digital certificates to individuals. They already have infrastructure and procedures in place for identity verification and physical delivery. I suppose that&#x27;s too much like a federally-issued ID to ever fly, though our &quot;REAL ID&quot; drivers licenses are, in effect, a federal ID anyway. I&#x27;d rather have a digital certificate out of the deal too.