[chrbarrol]

I don't know how common this is in other countries but in Norway we have a common system called BankID which is pretty much the de-facto way to identify yourself when applying for government services, bank loans or basically anything else "important". It usually consists of a two-factor authenticator issued by your bank, a password and your "birth number" (basically SSN) if you have all three as far as any bank or the government is concerned you "are" the person. However since it is so robust I don't think it can be exploited unless you royally fuck up. I wonder how the per capita identity theft cases in Norway are compared to the US because of this system, I would think much lower.

[wesammikhail]

It isn´t BankID that´s robust. In fact, as a federation service, it is probably one of the worst maintained ones in human history.

The thing that makes identity theft harder in Scandinavia is the fact that Person-nr (SSNs) are public information. I can look up anyone´s SSN via a quick search (using https://upplysning.se for instance). Yet I can do very little with that information (compared to the US). That said however, it is possible to ruin someone´s life here as well if you really wanted to, it would just take a little bit more work.

[marcosdumay]

In Brazil we also have a number assigned to each person (as do most countries). It's just not a secret (but it is personal information, and thus companies can not publish it), so it only handles identification. People are expected to use some other means for authentication.

Many people have this number published for one reason or another, and it doesn't become a problem.

[Alex_Romanov]

In Ukraine this Person-nr is private data.