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I have the feeling this is mostly a US thing, where a social security card with almost nil personal data is widely used for identification. In Europe you won't get very far with a birthday and a name - and you certainly won't get a credit card or anything close to it.
In slovenia, you have your name, surname and date of birth, but also unique citizen number (EMŠO) and your personal tax number.

They tell you not to tell anyone your EMŠO... but EMŠO is generated from your date of birth, gender, former yugoslav republic you were born in (slovenia=50) and the sequental number of your birth that day (0-499 boys, 500-999 girls)... plus a checksum. So if you were born in slovenia, are a boy, and were a third boy born on 20th december 1970 (970... because why waste numbers?!?!), your emšo would be 201297050003K (K=checksum, too lazy to calculate).

We also have a tax number, that they also tell you not to share... but then you open up an independent contractor business (technically, it's a not a seprate company, but "you" are the company), and your personal tax number is published in many many online systems, info pages, you have to put it on receipts, ads, you have to tell it when you're buying toilet paper for work use, etc.

But yeah... if you want to open a bank account, you need a government issued id card (or passport), and they check it very very throughly.

Polish PESEL has the same problem of only having 5 numbers per day, one of which is also checksum so limited.

Tax number NIP is relatively public, any relevant accountant will have it.

The remaining secret thing is indeed the ID card and/or the passport. That's why if it ever gets lost or stolen you're supposed to immediately file for a replacement. Theoretically at that point someone might impersonate you.

Several bank loans and store cards were taken out in my name using only my name, address and date of birth, in the UK. The same cynical business logic applies the world over: it's cheaper to clean up after the inevitable fraud than to implement proper identity checks. This calculus is of course aided by the fact that the detection of the fraud and the organising of the cleanup is taken care of entirely by the victim. "Victim", not "customer", because usually there is no business relationship between the company with the shitty identity checks and the person that has to live with the consequences.

I recommend contacting the credit rating agencies and getting them to place a note on your record with a password, eg. [1]. Don't wait until someone "steals your identity". It's the only way to get these companies to do something resembling an actual identity check. Doing it after they've lent in your name (as the rating agencies suggest) rather defeats the object.

[1] https://help.equifax.co.uk/EquifaxOnlineHelp/s/article/Howdo...

The fact that the UK has this nasty concept of “credit history” helps with this, since now all that’s needed to take out credit is basic details to lookup the credit bureau profile and then they “vouch” for you.

In countries where this doesn’t exist, obtaining credit requires providing proof of income (payslip, etc) to the lender which they verify. A mere name/address/date of birth might be enough to open inconsequential accounts such as loyalty cards, but will absolutely not get you credit - therefore the damage to identity theft victims is greatly reduced or even nullified.

Bad payers are still penalised even without a credit bureau system by a register the government operates onto which a debtor is registered for a certain period after legal action by a lender (so this requires significant effort from the lender - you don’t get on this register because of a telecoms billing mishap for example).

With regards to setting a password, I wouldn’t trust CRAs to enforce this. What you can do however is pay for CIFAS protective registration - it’s usually for victims or those at high risk of identity theft but there’s no legal requirement so anyone can pay the admin fee and get added to the register. Lenders check this during credit applications and this puts an instant block on any kind of automated approval and requires them to do further verification.

You’d have to see it to believe it how easy and normal credit is over here in USA. Even coming from uk it surprised me. You can even buy tyres on tick.

That only works because of low friction lending.

Lenders are "encouraged" to check the password. In your experience, how frequently do they do so?
Which is absolutely demented.
I always find it curious that allegedly Swedish people on HN post this sentiment over and over, but then never link to their own personal information.

Why not share, if it's so harmless? Isn't that the point you're trying to make?

I'm not Swedish, but a friend of mine showed me a website for it. Here is a random example of a person who lives in Täby, Sweden:

https://www.ratsit.se/19290708-Bertil_Thomas_Andersson_Taby/...

> Bertil Thomas Andersson - 1929-07-08 (93 years old) - Address: Lyktgränd 2 lgh 1706, 183 36 Täby, phone number 070-208 35 86

The website also adds information about income:

> (machine translation) In Täby, Bertil Thomas Andersson's home municipality, there are 5218 income millionaires. The proportion of people with payment notes in his postcode 183 36 is 7.3% and the average income is 295 679 SEK ($27,378) per year.

If the person runs any companies, that would be visible as well.

All of this is public information, for each individual and company in Sweden (except the ones that have requested to not be visible, or are protected)

Maybe they don’t want their identity and their opinions to be linked.