<story><title>USPS In-Person Identity Proofing</title><url>https://faq.usps.com/s/article/USPS-In-Person-Identity-Proofing</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lxgr</author><text>This used to be what everybody in Germany had to do to open a bank account or request a new credit card, until the alternative of KYC by video call became popular.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not efficient by any means, but in my view it beats the US practice treating an SSN as a password, together with bizarre &amp;quot;security questions&amp;quot; sourced from public records that some banks use as a &amp;quot;verification method&amp;quot;. And no, &amp;quot;phone number verification&amp;quot; (that really only works for phone numbers with the big three mobile carriers) should also never have been a thing.&lt;p&gt;I really, really hope to see a usable-by-everyone identification method one day, as opposed to &amp;quot;usable by enough&amp;quot;, with a sizable fraction of the population just being denied access to credit, banking, and more, just because they don&amp;#x27;t exist in the expected form in some creepy data miner&amp;#x27;s database.&lt;p&gt;Ironically, German ID cards support exactly such a method: You can just tap it on your iOS or Android phone for a &amp;quot;qualified electronic signature&amp;quot; as defined by EU law. And as a non-citizen, you can now finally get an &amp;quot;e-ID only&amp;quot; card, so nobody is excluded from that scheme! Unfortunately, I don&amp;#x27;t know a single person that remembers their six-digit PIN that&amp;#x27;s required for that feature...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nicbou</author><text>These systems are remarkably hostile to recent immigrants.&lt;p&gt;PostIdent (go to post office, get verified, send confirmation by mail) does not support Indian passports, among many others. The video replacement has the same flaw. You are legally entitled to a bank account, but a large portion of immigrants are left out.&lt;p&gt;Many banks now require a plastic residence permit. In Berlin it takes a few months to arrive. How do you pay your rent while you wait?&lt;p&gt;The residence permit is an eID, but I don&amp;#x27;t know anyone who activated it. You get an activation code weeks before the permit arrives, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t explain why it&amp;#x27;s useful and the activation requires an in-person visit somewhere. So I&amp;#x27;m told; I have not activated mine.&lt;p&gt;Soon they want to use the eID for the address registration. This would save everyone an in-person appointment... except immigrants who must register long before they get a residence permit.&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, there are old Germans who must also be accounted for, so old-fashioned bureaucratic services exist in parallel.&lt;p&gt;France allegedly has a good method: the postal worker knocks at your door and verifies your identity.</text></comment>
<story><title>USPS In-Person Identity Proofing</title><url>https://faq.usps.com/s/article/USPS-In-Person-Identity-Proofing</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lxgr</author><text>This used to be what everybody in Germany had to do to open a bank account or request a new credit card, until the alternative of KYC by video call became popular.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not efficient by any means, but in my view it beats the US practice treating an SSN as a password, together with bizarre &amp;quot;security questions&amp;quot; sourced from public records that some banks use as a &amp;quot;verification method&amp;quot;. And no, &amp;quot;phone number verification&amp;quot; (that really only works for phone numbers with the big three mobile carriers) should also never have been a thing.&lt;p&gt;I really, really hope to see a usable-by-everyone identification method one day, as opposed to &amp;quot;usable by enough&amp;quot;, with a sizable fraction of the population just being denied access to credit, banking, and more, just because they don&amp;#x27;t exist in the expected form in some creepy data miner&amp;#x27;s database.&lt;p&gt;Ironically, German ID cards support exactly such a method: You can just tap it on your iOS or Android phone for a &amp;quot;qualified electronic signature&amp;quot; as defined by EU law. And as a non-citizen, you can now finally get an &amp;quot;e-ID only&amp;quot; card, so nobody is excluded from that scheme! Unfortunately, I don&amp;#x27;t know a single person that remembers their six-digit PIN that&amp;#x27;s required for that feature...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>overlordalex</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s if you even got a pin in the first place!&lt;p&gt;I discovered this recently when I wanted to use the gloriously named AusweisApp2 (ID app 2, superseding a PC app which was at least forward thinking enough to be called ID app 1).&lt;p&gt;In theory it&amp;#x27;s simple to request a new pin - you can even do it within the app! However I&amp;#x27;ve moved since I acquired the card, and so instead of the reset mails going to my registered address, I can only assume they went to the address stored on the card. And in a catch-22 of course you can only update that with a pin...&lt;p&gt;But no worries, you can simply book an appointment at your nearest buergeramt to have a pin reset in person; except there are no free slots in the next 3 months.. anywhere!&lt;p&gt;I needed documents for a new visa, which should give me a new card (and hopefully a new pin!), which ultimately turned out to be faster to do than trying to sort out the damn pin</text></comment>