Now UC is talking about identity hijacking in Sweden. And they talk about the problem with exposure of the personal id that constitutes the first 6 digits of your personal id number!
Listen to Swedish media here.
I’ve been making a lot of noise about this lately. Check here for more, and filter on TRACE in Categories to see it all.
How do you get that solid legal thread back to the originating source of your financial reporting when using XBRL? It’s all about placing security around the identity? To find out more, I’ll be talking about this at XBRL Orlando on Wednesday 11th June. Find out more here…
http://youtu.be/an1yIoby_pc
For those of you that want a quick summary of how the Swedish ID number is created… here we go..
1. The personal identity number consists of 10 digits and a hyphen.
2. The first six correspond to the person’s birthday, in YYMMDD form.
3. They are followed by a hyphen.
4. The seventh through ninth are a serial number.
5. An odd ninth number is assigned to males
6. and an even ninth number is assigned to females.
7. The tenth digit is a checksum which was introduced in 1967 when the system was computerised.
Up to 1990, the seventh and eighth digits were correlated with the county where the bearer of the number was born or (if born before 1947) where he/she had been living, according to tax records, on January 1, 1947, with a special code (usually 9 as 7th digit) for immigrants.
Everyone however keeps their number and it is not hard to find out someone’s number if you know the birth date, the birth county and the checksum algorithm. Even easier is to call the tax authority and ask, since the personal identity number is public information.
Do you want to understand how your Swedish identity number is created… or maybe not, it is explained here. If you know how it is calculated after the first 6 digits which is your date of birth, then it must be pretty easy for others to work this out?
Although I did get from a source that one can just ring up the Swedish Tax Agency and ask for any Swedish residents personal ID. I haven’t tested this yet.. but I am sorely tempted to try 😉