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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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.
and file their returns so they get a refund.
which is unfortunate since it means you gave the government an interest-free loan during the year. It’s better to adjust withholding amounts to try and break even, or owe money (but not too much that you get hit with an underpayment penalty)
I kinda wish this were possible. I’ll pay my state, fuck the feds
Was just worrying about this with my spouse
Not mine. I live in a country that isn’t an absolute joke.
Must be nice
What’s it like? :(
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.
He should have nothing to do with the UK, but he’s still sticking his fingers in British pies by petitioning for Tommy Robinson’s release and promoting Reform UK.
Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon (the shite) will stay where he belongs regardless, and Reform will never be anything but a gammon minority party.
I hope it stays that way, but they are already pressuring everyone to move further right. I’m worried that the gammons will vote them in
Give it time. He’s already working on throwing the German election to literal nazis. Just wait till your next election.
The next UK election won’t be until after the next US election, so I’m not sure he’s going to actually be able to.
He’ll be gone by the time our next election comes around. That’s presuming, of course, that America will wake up during this presidency.
I hope they have otherwise he’s not getting to get any employment.
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
Keyword unfortunately being “absolute”
Just wait until dear old Nigel comes.
Starmer might be your Biden, a short but underwhelming break between far right incompetence (BoJo and Nigel).
And it’s only a matter of time until until he boasts about it by posting someone’s SN during an petty online argument.
To be fair the social security number is not exactly the most secure thing in the world. More than likely there’s a lot of people who have your social security number and you don’t have any clue that they do.
That being said, I don’t understand why he’s being allowed this kind of access. Even with the Orange douchebag’s blessing, there should be other people minding the store. Shouldn’t there?
there should be other people minding the store. Shouldn’t there?
There was until they were removed and yes man installed
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…
Why is Facebook 2auth reset harder, than stealing someones identity in US?
Because the social security number has become the default way to uniquely identify an individual in the US despite the fact that it was never intended for that function.
I get that, I just can’t comprehend, how you can do anything with it. In my country we have similar thing. We have “Birth number” and it is on every contract we sign. But just knowing it does jack shit. (But yeah, we also have identity card, and that changes number every renewal/loss)
More context:
For online sign you would need atleast 2 identifications (for example Identity cars and passport). And usualy thay make you come anyway to prove you’re you.
It is bafeling to me, that some peaple in US have no means of identification.
For a long time, many companies treated the SSN as a sort of secure password that only the individual would know. Some companies still do. Others, like schools and the military, just treated it like what it is. A unique id number. If you know name, address and SSN, it’s possible to do a lot of different things that can create headaches for the person who was targeted. New credit cards, bank accounts, loans, transferred utilities, rental agreements.
Authentication and two-factor system have actual security features. Social security numbers have no security features at all. They were never designed to be used as a security token.
Elon Musk has to go.
Bruh who doesn’t at this point?
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.
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Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE)
Is that seriously what it’s called? Elon Musk is producing enough cringe to power all of human civilization. I have no idea if this is the worst timeline or not, but it’s certainly the most embarrassing.
Why are we coming up with nonsense scare tactic arguments? He’s obviously just going to divert federal funds to himself via his companies.
He has no need for a bunch of shitters’ SSN when he would just open himself to the greatest class action in history because it would take about 100 million of us to make him any significant wealth.
Does he have one?
What is his?
I’m sure quite a few people have mine. SSN’s aren’t a secure thing at all. It should be updated.
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So cool. How do you come up with something that clever?
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Yes I’m bitter, and no my jokes aren’t funny but I don’t care.
Congratulations, you are ready to start a career in stand-up comedy!
(The former was why I quit doing standup, a lot of them never stop being bitter.)
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.
c/news is generally for American news. c/worldnews is for everything else.
Yes, I know you don’t like that.
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See above, re: I know you don’t like that.
You have, as far as I can see it, three options: find your own server and make your own news community, accept that this is how it is and you have no way to change it even if you don’t like it, or whine about it.
You are choosing the third option for some reason. I’m not sure why.
Do someone about it instead of crying
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.
