this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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All U.S. Social Security numbers may need to be changed following a massive breach that is already being investigated as a national threat (www.ecoticias.com)
submitted 2 days ago by Cnote5@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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According to a protected disclosure filed with the Office of Special Counsel, Borges told the Government Accountability Project that DOGE officials working at Social Security created a “live copy” of the country’s Social Security records in a separate cloud environment that sidestepped usual security checks.

The group says those lapses put the Social Security information of more than 300 million Americans at risk.

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[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 16 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Instead of new SSNs, how about we maybe the number less risky in general?

It should never have served as a "secret". Authenticating someone needs more than some account number. SSN should be more of a "username", not a password.

[–] kinther@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

CGP Grey's video - the worst ID system in america

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

It was never meant to part of any kind of database, but banks and businesses found a loophole to that a long ass time ago and now we're here.

[–] wicked@programming.dev 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

What do you think it's meant for? It's a perfect fit for any database that needs to uniquely identify a person.

The problem is using it as authorization without any other checks.

[–] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 hours ago

It's not a perfect fit for anything that requires security. It was never meant to be a SECURE identifier. Just AN identifier.