In college, early 90s, our student IDs had our photo and SSN on it

I’ve operated ever since under rhe assumption anyone and everyone has access to it.

Then with all the data breaches over the last 10/15 years? Freeze credit reports with the 3 reporting agencies for free. Check for extra accounts with the free annual credit report pulls.

For all practical purposes, our SSNs are easily obtained by someone who wants it.

I’m not sure what the solution is, but a unique identifier has to be housed somewhere where in can be accessed in a format humans can read, which means it can be accessed and dumped so it’s no longer private or secret.

I’m not a fan of biometrics, and I tolerate 2FA. I really think it’s more important we change how we think about and use personal, unique, identifiers (like SSNs)

What I’m reading out of this… there’s going to be a massive shortage of senior programmers in 20(?) years. If juniors aren’t being let go/not hired and AI is doing junior work…

AI will have to massively improve or else it’s going to be interesting when companies are trying to hold on to retirement age people and train up replacement seniors to verify the AI delivers proper code.