Comment by mkleczek

This is actually a very deep and interesting topic. Stripping information from an identifier disconnects a piece of data from the real world which means we no longer can match them. But such connection is the sole purpose of keeping the data in the first place. So, what happens next is that the real world tries to adjust and the "data-less" identifier becomes a real world artifact. The situation becomes the same but worse (eg. you don't exist if you don't remember your social security id). In extreme cases people are tattooed with their numbers.

The solution is not to come up with yet another artificial identifier but to come up with better means of identification taking into account the fact that things change.