Data Breaches

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AT&T confirms data for 73 million customers leaked on hacker forum (www.bleepingcomputer.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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AT&T has finally confirmed it is impacted by a data breach affecting 73 million current and former customers after initially denying the leaked data originated from them.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Eventually we're gonna have to have a way to change our social security number like we do with credit cards when they get hacked.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Why would that ever be possible? None of this hacking is a problem that affects rich people. Why would the United States do a law that helps normal people?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

it is possible.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Fwiw this doesn't affect very poor people either lmao

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

It would be better to treat SSN as a username, because that's exactly what it is. It shouldn't be used as a secret for security purposes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

you can.

We can assign a different number only if:

Sequential numbers assigned to members of the same family are causing problems.
More than one person is assigned or using the same number.
A victim of identity theft, who has attempted to fix problems resulting from the misuse but continues to be disadvantaged by using the original number.
There is a situation of harassment, abuse or life endangerment.
An individual has religious or cultural objections to certain numbers or digits in the original number. (We require written documentation in support of the objection from a religious group with which the number holder has an established relationship.) To request a different Social Security number, contact your local Social Security office for an in-person appointment.

https://faq.ssa.gov/en-us/Topic/article/KA-02220

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is actually a horrible implementation though, because they just tie your new number to your old number. They don’t invalidate your old number at all. So now you have two SSNs that can be used to steal your identity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I don't know if that is actually the case or not, but regardless, yeah, it's overall a pretty bad system.