[ryandrake]

We need our infrastructure to stop treating bank account numbers and social security numbers as secrets. At least in the US, bank account numbers appear on physical checks and are required to be shared in order to do an ACH transfer, and a social security number is not supposed to be used as an identifier (unless to the Social Security Administration itself) or as a secret password.

Ideally, nothing nefarious should happen if both of them were listed and queryable publicly.

[silversmith]

Hang on, can you actually do something nefarious with just the bank account number?

[ryandrake]

If someone has your bank account and bank’s routing number (which is also not secret), they can make fraudulent ACH transfers and payments from your account. Of course it will most likely be caught as fraud some time after the fact, but just those two bits of not-secret info are enough to grief someone.

[rogerrogerr]

And both numbers, plus your name and address and a convenient sample of your signature, are on every check you’ve ever written.

[mystifyingpoi]

AFAIK that's US thing. In normal countries bank account numbers are not a secret. The worst thing that can happen is someone sending you money.

[derektank]

It’s quite ridiculous that we haven’t been able to build a modern identification system capable of replacing SSNs in the last 30 years.