Summary
Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) have been granted access to the U.S. Treasury’s federal payment system, raising concerns about security and misuse.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved the move after a top Treasury official was ousted for resisting.
Critics warn Musk could freeze payments to government programs or manipulate federal contracts.
The move coincides with DOGE’s takeover of the Office of Personnel Management.
Experts call it a dangerous power grab, as Musk holds no official government position.
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Why is Facebook 2auth reset harder, than stealing someones identity in US?
Thanks to Verizon/TMobile/AT&T being the swiss cheese fort Knox, I’d be surprised if Felon Skum didn’t have it.
Companies have played fast and loose with our PII for so long that it’s at a point where we need something else to act as that value so it’s actually secret. But with this administration, that would end up being a wrist tattoo…
I already have a suspicion that he might already be leaking information out to third parties from Twitter (private messages, etc.), so…
Everyone has my social security number. It’s one of the stupidest security fails of all time that nobody seems to want to fix. And now there is an entire “credit protection” industry so it will remain that way.
What happens when we file our taxes? Will we even get our refunds?
Would be funny if there was a mass movement and nobody paid their taxes.
Unfortunately, most people have their taxes withheld from their paychecks, and file their returns so they get a refund.
If people didn’t file returns, the IRS would end up with more money.
I kinda wish this were possible. I’ll pay my state, fuck the feds
Was just worrying about this with my spouse
All of my data got breached multiple times going back to the dot-com bubble days, by Yahoo, the original 2015 OPM Beach and by two of the big credit bureaus for a start. If Musk has my social at this point it doesn’t matter.
SSN is not a password and anyone who uses it like one doesn’t understand security because you can’t change it. It’s a user ID, like a finger print or email address.
In principle yes; in practice, no.
Not mine. I live in a country that isn’t an absolute joke.
What’s it like? :(
Keyword unfortunately being “absolute”
Must be nice
Just wait until dear old Nigel comes.
Starmer might be your Biden, a short but underwhelming break between far right incompetence (BoJo and Nigel).
If it’s the UK, the government probably has assigned you a National Insurance number.
Yes, but apartheid boy has nothing to do with the UK.
We also have id codes but you can’t do anything with it except tell your dob. Its used as a username for aystems that need extra security like voting, taxes, medical system or banks and such
So does everyone, thanks Equifax
It’s weird that SSNs are treated as some sort of secret number given they don’t have any security features. They were never supposed to be used the way they’re used today, but there’s no good alternative yet.
The US really needs a replacement, for example a national digital ID based on PKI (public key infrastructure) where you can generate new ID numbers based on a private key. Each bank, lender, employer, etc that needs it would get a unique ID that only works for them, and you could revoke access for just that one company if needed.
Kinda like how OAuth/OIDC login works, where you can log in to sites using your Google account, Apple account, self-hosted Authentik or Authelia, etc. but the site you’re logging in to never sees your password. If a site/app misbehaves, you revoke their access to the account, and everything else that uses the account can keep working.
I agree in principle, but try explaining that to your grandmother.
The US really needs a replacement, for example a national digital ID based on PKI… you revoke their access to the account, and everything else that uses the account can keep working
There is already an open standard growing around exactly this concept, Web5 Distributed IDs (DID): https://dev.to/tbdevs/what-is-web5-233o
Disclosure: I worked on the implementation for an Open Banking company (does that need to be disclosed? <shrug> I’m including it lest someone think I’m a shill)
Huh, TIL. Very interesting, thanks for the link!
“May or may not, but mostly may.”
It’s safe to say he has a lot more than that
Bruh who doesn’t at this point?
Elon Musk has to go.
Didn’t Elon get hacked and his SS number leaked?
No, I’m not about to go search for that, but I’m pretty sure that happened, with the 23andme data breach…
His Schutzstaffel number?
Was it eighty eight or neinty nein?
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So cool. How do you come up with something that clever?
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Well, your in a topic thats clearly only about Americans, and you felt the need to yell “im not American this doesn’t affect me”, as if anyone cares.
No one cares if you’re not american. The topic doesn’t affect you by default.
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What indicates that it’s only about Americans
Aside from the headline, the very first sentence of the article.
The world’s richest man may now have access to the confidential personal information of every taxpayer in the United States
But we both know you’re just playing dumb and you obviously knew it from the headline, because you obviously didn’t bother to read the article.
And of course there’s the article summary in the body of the post that’s blatantly about the US.
We’re in a general news community on Lemmy.world.
You probably want !world@lemmy.world.
Back on Reddit, /r/news basically became about US news – I mean, it wasn’t a restriction to only be US, but it was just overwhelmed by US news – and so /r/worldnews was created in response, so that there was a subreddit that explicitly excluded US-specific news, so that it wouldn’t get flooded by it. !news@lemmy.world and !world@lemmy.world kinda parallels that relationship.
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If you think the US is going to annex Canada, you truly are a moron. I can only imagine the type of work you do. You can’t read, so that’s probably a problem for you first off.
I’m sure quite a few people have mine. SSN’s aren’t a secure thing at all. It should be updated.
You can get anyone’s SSN for $15 on the dark web. lol. The amount of leaks/hacks that have happened to all of the companies that require your SSN is insane.
You can get it on the clear web for about $20 completely legitimately. Background checks have been a thing forever and reveal basically everything.
Don’t they usually ask for your SSN before doing the background check? So they already have it?
You’d hope so but not really, they basically need as much partial information as you can supply so they know they’re finding the right records.
Fullz are great because you already know that social belongs to that person but you really just need enough cross-verifiable information to confirm. If you only have one or two pieces of info you can pay somebody like Checkr or Certn to run your check or just find a local PI to pull them. If you have LE connects they have access to databases with criminal histories as well but AFAIK (in my state at least) those searches are logged.
Lmfao. There ya go. Even better.
