First, I’m not going to give any social media my ID.
If someone intends to expose your ID to hackers due to Twitter’s poor security performance, this presents a perfect occasion for them.
I don’t know why these social media companies are so fixated on asking for personal information. And I’m sure this is just the beginning of Elon’s grand plan.
Perhaps it’s time to abandon Twitter and move to other fediverse or decentralised platforms? I would love to see a mass migration.
I’ve never really considered it before. Should IDs be considered private information, or public information?
They very much are personal information not publicly available.
Yet you show them to the minimum wage earner before buying alcohol, or let a bouncer scan it before getting into a club? That doesn’t seem like something you’d need to do with private information.
In both cases though, there is a legal requirement to prove that you’re above legal age to buy/consume alcohol. However, there’s is no legal requirement to provide such information to a social media platform.
“Yet”
Sure, but if they’re not really private information, then what is the concern? It seems to function similarly to an email address, kinda? Something I’d really rather not be shown to the public but also something I’m giving out to the public all the time.
Although it’s relatively not so private, I’d still rather not be giving it away to social media. Unlike an email, your ID, full name and DOB is enough for scammers to use your name for shady stuff, at least in my country.
It got to the point here that scammers get older/retired people IDs to open bank account and get loans, leaving these people with debt + the whole legal process.
Over the years this has become more invasive. We didn’t have to hand over our I’d for scanning potentially into a permanent record to do things. A quick proof of age was all people cared about for those things inappropriate for minors.
It’s illegal to ask for your SSN, yet it happens all the time and we have no recourse if we refuse.
We’re being desensitized to the invasion of privacy to the point we don’t care any more. I think that is the goal. Death by 1000 pricks.
But your SSN is private and you shouldn’t give it out or show it except in very rare instances.
What information on a driver’s license is private? Your address? Your eye color? Your birthday?
All those bits of information are caller personally identifiable information (PII) and are protected by law for anything involving health and financial data.
In it’s old form, the license isn’t a huge problem because people can’t use it to clear your accounts, fraudulently open credit cards, take out loans.
All of those are trivial with the SSN, combined with a few of the above data points.
Now, however, in America the drivers license is becoming required to be a full homeland security certified ID equal to or more important than the passport.
It is encoded with all your vitals and readable by a quick scan. With your full name, age, birthdate, address, height, weight, and eye color combined with the SSN, you are screwed if shady players have that.
Drivers license number is very frequently used for identity verification purposes or gates away access to essential government benefits. It’s personal information; as evidenced by the fact that it’s definitionally covered by literally every states data breach notification laws and the handful of state consumer privacy laws that exist.
Yes, except you give that card to all sorts of people, right? So it is really private? Identifying, yes, but private?
In the digital age, absolutely.
Show, yes. Take a picture of, no.
You don’t think there is a camera aimed at the register?
Ha.
Not one capable of registering all the minute details of my ID, no.
How sure are you? If licenses were such valuable troves of information, surely one person would have thought of a small hidden camera, right?
Very.
But at the same time, all they care about is date of birth. Theyre not looking for name, hair color, eye color, address, weight, organ donor status, etc.
Well, DoB and the picture. Are those other data fields considered private?
Many of the scanning apps allow for customer and patron lists be built off the scans, even without that feature they usually store everything contained in a scan. That barcode on the back of American Licenses will often have more information than even the front. I don’t know about current standards, but at least one American state had your ssn as your id# and a few others would include it in the barcode scan. It really depends state by state how much info is in a code but it almost always more than whats on the front.
I can’t speak definitely, but I’m pretty sure it’s been made illegal to have your driver’s license ID be a derivative of your SSN. That was a thing that happened though.
But I can’t tell if you’re pointing this out to strengthen my stance, or weaken it. It’s still something that gets scanned to get into a bar or buy alcohol, and that’s effectively the public, right?
Its more towards the comment that only date of birth is seen, and that every scan is way more invasive than it seems. Overall I am not sure if I think its the best state, but the cat is so far out of the bag on this one its hard to consider it private. Almost every hotel has photocopied my license, and in many downtown areas, for a few years at least now, you have to scan your license to get a badge to enter the building to attend a meeting or appointment. Somehow the folder of license photocopies at the perpetually empty front desk inspire no confidence in privacy, hopefully the desk is locked?
You may be right, in person, you could probably figure most of that stuff out at a glance, but at the same time they dont also have access t one of my internet handles and access to my likes and dislikes. Well i defintely wouldnt want any of them to be associated with my twitter account
I think this may be closer to the reality of the situation. It’s not so much that IDs are private, it’s that people want their Twitter (X?) account to be anonymous.
I get that. My username on Twitter was my real name so I kinda messed that up right away. I didn’t really use it though.
Can you refuse to produce ID to law enforcement in the U.S. without probable cause? Yes? Then it’s private.
You give your ID info to whomever you want, including the minimum wage worker. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.
That’s not any working definition of private information I’ve ever seen.
We’re talking about privacy in the context of information security.
Edit: for context, I’m not questioning whether people must give their ID to Twitter.
Well, in that context, again, it still works.
Show the ID to the minimum wage worker so they can prove identify; put it back into your wallet. Don’t want to show it? Well, don’t show it. Can someone snatch your wallet and see it without your consent? Sure, just like it happens on systems with weak security.
I’m sorry but I’m not following your point. I’m questioning whether the info on a license is really “private info”. I am not suggesting that people be forced to give Twitter their ID
It depends on the country.
Source: lived in two countries, one of which a person’s ID number can be publicly disclosed.
Can you elaborate? What makes an ID number unable to be disclosed? What is the point of identification that you can’t show?
I never said unable to be disclosed. Private as in, you control who you want to see it - as opposed to public, which means, anyone can see it whether you like it or not.
Oh. I was thinking private like a password.
Got it. I don’t think you or I are inherently wrong. What you describe, I call it secret. Not private. A password is secret. Giving it to someone else, even for a quick pick, is compromising it.
A driver’s license is private, but if you show it to someone else, your personal information is not necessarily compromised - or so we are led to believe.