What if someone in a government agency just started printing birth certificates and social security cards for everyone? How would anyone know the difference? Like fake IDs on a mass scale.

  • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    A county administrator could go rogue and start issuing birth certificates to random adults, but they’d quickly be found out. Then it’s easy to spot the fakes like “All Hazard County birth certs issued between 2025-04-01 and 2025-04-20 are sus.“

    • Dadifer@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 days ago

      How would they be found out, though? When was the last time someone asked for your birth certificate?

      • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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        2 days ago

        When was the last time someone asked for your birth certificate?

        • Just renewed my driver’s licensed and it was required
        • For some reason, I needed it to request a transcript from my college
        • Signing the closing papers on my damn house? Believe it or not (I didn’t), birth certificate. No idea why.

        Are other countries this obsessed with birth certificates?

        • WideEyedStupid@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I have only ever needed my birth certficate once. When I got married. I was living in a foreign (but still EU-) country at the time; I have no idea if I would have needed it to marry in my own country. It’s possible my mom might have needed it when I was little, to get me into elementary school or something, no idea about that. It’s definitely not needed for a driver’s license or a house. That’s ridiculous.

        • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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          2 days ago

          I didn’t need a birth certificate when buying a house. That seems odd.

          I also needed one to renew my license. They made it really awesome by rejecting my original birth certificate from the hospital and told me I’d need to pay $70 to get a replacement from some government records office. This isn’t even for a real ID or anything.

        • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
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          2 days ago

          Someone will get caught trying to do something illegal with their fraudulent docs, and eventually it will all unravel.