[mongrelion]

Perhaps this is more security by obscurity but making it easier on criminals to find your personal information is not necessarily a good thing.

Imagine being a criminal and now you want to find your victim's personal information and you directly call Skatteverket...

Less compelling than going to hitta.se from a public, open wifi network

[eqvinox]

> making it easier on criminals to find your personal information

This can also work to the victim's benefit: any information publicly accessible from these records is automatically unsuitable for identity theft and the likes. If e.g. a tax ID number is in these records (no idea if that's the case), some company asking for that number to establish authenticity/authorization won't have any ground to stand on if it gets called into question.

That said it's probably possible to make inferences, i.e. knowing what company someone works for might make it possible to guess security questions (e.g. "what was your first boss' name?")

[Kiro]

Social security number is public information as well and it's never used for authentication so you're right. You normally identify yourself using BankID, which is issued by your bank and tied to your phone.

Identity theft is still possible but requires much more intricate methods.