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IRS doesnt tell 1M taxpayers that illegals stole their Social Security numbers
2016 Aug 31, 9:35am 878 views 4 comments
by zzyzzx follow (9)
Comments 1 - 4 of 4 Search these comments
Why does the U.S. House of Rep/Con/Teas allow this?
When will they cut funds to the IRS?
Dan8267
2016 Aug 31, 9:54am
IRS doesnt tell 1M taxpayers that illegals stole their Social Security numbers
It's the IRS's fault that social security numbers are stealable. The IRS should have never used SS #s as tax IDs, and the IRS should not have allowed anyone to use a tax ID as a global unique ID for each U.S. citizen. As a result of these two mistakes, SS #s have become citizen ID numbers and are public knowledge.
There are plenty of techniques used in IT for given people IDs that cannot be used by others, forged, or replicated.
- nonces
- one-way salted hashes
- time-based RSA keys
- revocable certificates
These problems were solved by IT long ago. Of course, now that the IRS has establish public SS #s as identifiers, these numbers offer no security, and indeed by their nature, cannot. A radically different solution would be required to deal with identity theft, and the first part of any solution that could work is a set of very strong privacy laws for individuals and the right to own and control data about you.
zzyzzx
2016 Aug 31, 11:05am
There are plenty of techniques used in IT for given people IDs that cannot be used by others, forged, or replicated.
- nonces
- one-way salted hashes
- time-based RSA keys
- revocable certificatesThese problems were solved by IT long ago. Of course, now that the IRS has establish public SS #s as identifiers, these numbers offer no security, and indeed by their nature, cannot. A radically different solution would be required to deal with identity theft, and the first part of any solution that could work is a set of very strong privacy laws for individuals and the right to own and control data about you.
All true, but wouldn't a simpler way to deal with this is to give out all refunds at once, after all the duplicate stuff has been sorted out. The current system give the benefit of the doubt to the first person using a given social security number, which usually is the fraudster.
zzyzzx
2016 Aug 31, 11:06am
There are plenty of techniques used in IT for given people IDs that cannot be used by others, forged, or replicated.
- nonces
- one-way salted hashes
- time-based RSA keys
- revocable certificates
Can their mainframes using COBOL handle this stuff? I wish I were joking, but I'm probably not. Yes, I know people who work in IT at the IRS.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/30/irs-doesnt-tell-1-million-taxpayers-that-illegal-i/
The IRS has discovered more than 1 million Americans whose Social Security numbers were stolen by illegal immigrants, but officials never bothered to tell the taxpayers themselves, the agency's inspector general said in a withering new report released Tuesday.
Investigators first alerted the IRS to the problem five years ago, but it's still not fixed, the inspector general said, and a pilot program meant to test a solution was canceled — and fell woefully short anyway.
As a result, most taxpayers don't learn that their identities have been stolen and their Social Security files may be screwed up.
“Taxpayers identified as victims of employment-related identity theft are not notified,” the inspector general said.
#incompetence #lackofcomminsense #crime #government #irs