In the United States all citizens are given a Social Security Number. Although its primary purpose is to track individuals for Social Security purposes, the Social Security number has become a national identification number for taxation and other purposes. Americans guard their social security number because it is extremely important in establishing credit. If you want to buy a house, a car, rent an apartment, rent a car, open a credit card, get a phone contract or any other large purchases they will want to run a credit check. The better your credit score the lower the interest rate they can offer you. If your credit score is low then they can deny you all together regardless if you work and have money. Your credit is your lifeline. If someone steals another person’s social security number they could commit a number of fraudulent acts without the person even knowing and it’s a long hard process to try to get it fixed. That is why people rarely give out this number unless it is absolutely necessary. It is probably one of the most important numbers to an American. It is a bit different here in Sweden.
The personal identity number (Swedish: personnummer) is the Swedish national identification number. When it was introduced in 1947 it was probably the first of its kind covering the total resident population of a country (The Social Security number in the United States is older, but it did not cover the whole population). Numbers are issued by the Swedish Tax Agency as part of the population register. The number is used by authorities, by health care, schools and universities (both public-run and private). Also used by banks and insurance companies. The personal identity number consists of 10 digits and a hyphen. The first six correspond to the person’s birthday, in YYMMDD form. They are followed by a hyphen. People over the age of 100 replace the hyphen with a plus sign. The seventh through ninth are a serial number. An odd ninth number is assigned to males and an even ninth number is assigned to females.
The difference between the social security number and the personalnummer is that the personalnummer is required everywhere. People are asked this number daily and it is even on their ID cards. There is no guarding this number and everything is tracked here. All stores and businesses can pull up your personal information with this 10 digit number. You are locked in the government’s system that can seemingly be accessed by anyone. I recently went to the doctor for a prescription, instead of a paper prescription or calling my local pharmacy the doctor entered it into her computer under my personal number, from there I could go to any pharmacy and access this prescription with my personalnummer. Even store rewards programs are linked to your personalnummer. It’s so strange. My natural instinct is to keep my identity to myself, but you can’t here and everyone seems fine with it.
*some information was taken from wikipedia