<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>orclev</author><text>Social security numbers are most emphatically not identification. The social security department tried for many years to get people to stop using your social as a form of identification, but companies (and sometimes even the government) still keep doing it. Social security cards printed before 1972 actually had a disclaimer printed on them that said &amp;quot;Not for identification purposes&amp;quot;, but the message has since been removed. Although rare, there are actually duplicate social security numbers as well, and not everyone has a social security number. A number of religious groups, most notably some sects of Amish, refuse to get social security numbers and regularly fight legal cases to prevent having a social security number as a requirement for access to government services (although obviously not social security).</text><parent_chain><item><author>ajre</author><text>Amazing that companies maintaining credit histories are relying on a person&amp;#x27;s name to map financial data to a &amp;#x27;person&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t we have unique identifiers call Social Security Numbers?</text></item><item><author>steven2012</author><text>To the OP:&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would check your credit report IMMEDIATELY.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m in the same boat as you, except I&amp;#x27;m in my 40s.  Most companies use Experian or Equifax to do some sort of credit verification by asking these questions.  However, about 5 years ago, the credit agencies merged my credit record with someone else with the same name, but entirely different birthday and location.&lt;p&gt;Evidently, they don&amp;#x27;t give a fuck because it took me years to get this wrong information off of my credit records.  I don&amp;#x27;t understand how this isn&amp;#x27;t libel, since they are spreading false information about me, and that drastically affected my credit, and I had to jump through hoops to get everything corrected.&lt;p&gt;The thing that really sucks is that Experian STILL has the wrong information about me, so when I&amp;#x27;m asked these credit questions, it&amp;#x27;s mixed with the other person&amp;#x27;s data, so I always fail the credit check.  Despite having nearly perfect credit, I&amp;#x27;ve failed the credit check numerous times, and like you, the decision has always been final, because no one appears to give a fuck.&lt;p&gt;The problem is I have no idea how to get Experian to refresh their data, even though it&amp;#x27;s several years old now.&lt;p&gt;It might be the case that the OP&amp;#x27;s credit history has been merged with someone else, and if this is the case, they need to fix it as soon as possible.  Use the yearly free credit report to make sure there is no loans or credit cards associated with your name, and if so, you need to call every single credit agency and dispute it.  It really sucks, and I don&amp;#x27;t understand how we let the credit agencies have this much power, where we the consumers have to suffer like this whenever THEY fuck up.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Square thinks I don’t exist</title><url>http://kevinchen.co/blog/square-identity-verification/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>lambda</author><text>No, Social Security Numbers are not unique.&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, many sources of credit information do not have access to your social security number to use as a key. Your phone company, cable company, oil company, and so on all may need to send your bills to collections and put a mark on your credit report, but they don&amp;#x27;t have access to your social security number (they may ask for it, but you aren&amp;#x27;t required to provide it).</text><parent_chain><item><author>ajre</author><text>Amazing that companies maintaining credit histories are relying on a person&amp;#x27;s name to map financial data to a &amp;#x27;person&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t we have unique identifiers call Social Security Numbers?</text></item><item><author>steven2012</author><text>To the OP:&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would check your credit report IMMEDIATELY.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m in the same boat as you, except I&amp;#x27;m in my 40s.  Most companies use Experian or Equifax to do some sort of credit verification by asking these questions.  However, about 5 years ago, the credit agencies merged my credit record with someone else with the same name, but entirely different birthday and location.&lt;p&gt;Evidently, they don&amp;#x27;t give a fuck because it took me years to get this wrong information off of my credit records.  I don&amp;#x27;t understand how this isn&amp;#x27;t libel, since they are spreading false information about me, and that drastically affected my credit, and I had to jump through hoops to get everything corrected.&lt;p&gt;The thing that really sucks is that Experian STILL has the wrong information about me, so when I&amp;#x27;m asked these credit questions, it&amp;#x27;s mixed with the other person&amp;#x27;s data, so I always fail the credit check.  Despite having nearly perfect credit, I&amp;#x27;ve failed the credit check numerous times, and like you, the decision has always been final, because no one appears to give a fuck.&lt;p&gt;The problem is I have no idea how to get Experian to refresh their data, even though it&amp;#x27;s several years old now.&lt;p&gt;It might be the case that the OP&amp;#x27;s credit history has been merged with someone else, and if this is the case, they need to fix it as soon as possible.  Use the yearly free credit report to make sure there is no loans or credit cards associated with your name, and if so, you need to call every single credit agency and dispute it.  It really sucks, and I don&amp;#x27;t understand how we let the credit agencies have this much power, where we the consumers have to suffer like this whenever THEY fuck up.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Square thinks I don’t exist</title><url>http://kevinchen.co/blog/square-identity-verification/</url></story>