The continued farce of personal security

I appreciate that with each new development in personal security the scammers find a work around, but its like everyone has just given up?

Its taken quite a while for the US to follow the rest of the fucking civilized world and get their chip
and pin shit together, and it would appear that one reason is that a 4-digit number can be more readily cloned/stolen than your signature. Yeah - that squiggle that means jack shit is apparently waaaaaay more secure than a 4 digit number. The squiggle that no-one checks. The squiggle that last week looked a lot like "Mickey Mouse" after an experiment in Safeway (seriously - try it. Its actually quite fun to sign the electronic pads with something other than your signature. Maybe next time I'll try "Michael Jackson" or "Marilyn Munroe" with a little heart in the "i"? Or how about no words at all? Just a line drawing of a cock and balls?) The squiggle that, when the clerk randomly does ask to see my ID clearly chooses to overlook the fact that my ID has a different last name. I'm glad my personal identification is secure in the hands of these highly trained till monkeys.

Well, you might say, that's still better than a 4 digit number. OK, shall we explore the other personal numbers that an individual is supposed to know by heart? Lets start with the SSN - Social Security Number. Issue 1: not everyone is entitled to an SSN (me included), but I am allowed to have a big girl bank account, so that won't work. Add to this the fact that although all the advice is that you shouldn't give out your SSN willy-nilly, you do, in fact, give out your SSN willy-nilly. When every other fucking organization wants to use your SSN as proof that you are who you say your are you end up putting it on all sorts of random application forms and even giving the last 4 digits over the phone to some strategically shaved till monkey in a shirt in order to update your contact details with Comcast.

So, SSN is a bit of a joke.

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Lets try something else that EVERYONE has - a phone number. Hold on there - surely thats a bit presumptuous? What if someone doesn't have a phone number? Well, hold on there indeed. You have hit upon one of the issues with this way of checking that your are who you say you are. The second issue is that phone numbers appear not to be exclusive and are regularly recycled. Lets take a walk down to Rite Aid. As with most points cards you are asked to put your phone number in at the till to identify you on their database and award you those glorious 3 points from the pack of Pringles and Neosporin you just purchased. But, wait! My phone number is apparently already registered with someone else's card. Well how do you like that? And, seeing as I've had the

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phone number for over a year and Plenti only came out last month, how the fuck is that possible? Join me, again, as we stroll over to Bevmo for the same story. The solution? Call up their customer service team who will sound surprised, talk to themselves for a bit while they look at the database, ask you if you have any other phone numbers you can use (you mean, aside from my actual phone number? A second one I have lying around for when I want to spice things up a bit? No.), ask you if anyone else lives in your house by the name of "Kumal" (You mean Kumal? The man who lives in my closet and uses my mobile phone to setup random store cards? No.) and then flap around with no serviceable resolution.

So, ladies and gentlemen, the mobile phone number is, I propose, even less valid as a means of identification than the SSN.

Where do we go from here? Who knows. Don't say email address because there are at least two of my namesakes in Berlin and London running around giving out the wrong bloody email address because in the past month I have been wished a happy birthday and congratulated for joining a medical institution in countries where I do not live. Idiots.

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