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Ordinarily don\\u2019t get my technology news from the local newspaper sold by the homeless in Denmark, but I did this week. \\xa0First of all, I learned that you can pay your homeless newspaper seller by text message. \\xa0If you don\\u2019t have loose change, as I often don\\u2019t, you can send a text to the newspaper seller\\u2019s registration number, along with the amount you want to give him, and the seller gets paid right away.\\xa0

Secondly, I learned that some homeless people have iPhones. \\xa0(pause). \\xa0Not my particular seller, but another reader had written a letter to the editor of the newspaper saying he\\u2019d try to buy a paper the previous week, but his seller had been too wrapped up in his iPhone to pay attention to a potential customer. The letter writer was asking if it made sense to spend 20 crowns on a newspaper to help a man\\u2026.who had a phone worth at least 2000 crowns.

The newspaper had a good response. \\xa0They said an iPhone was a perfect device for a homeless person. \\xa0It allowed him to keep all the information he needed in one place \\u2013 government documents, health records, family photos. \\xa0And it was a way for him to get phone calls and emails related to housing or jobs. \\xa0I thought that was a very sensible approach.

Danes have a very sensible approach to IT in general. \\xa0

The CPR number is a national menace.

That said, I have a great fear that more cybercrime and identity theft is on the way to Denmark. \\xa0As those of you who live here know, the country\\u2019s IT systems are all based around something called the CPR \\u2013 the central person register. Everyone has a CPR number, and you use it for everything \\u2013 for banking, for the doctor, for school, for taking books out of the library. \\xa0My daughter used hers last week to sign up for a Bhangra Dance course during summer vacation.\\xa0

So, lots of people have your CPR, and if they don\\u2019t, it\\u2019s pretty easy to guess. Your CPR number is your birthday, plus the century your card was issued in, plus 2 random numbers, plus your gender. \\xa0Did you know that \\u2013 men have uneven CPR numbers, and women have even numbers? \\xa0I did not, until I looked it up.\\xa0

Anyway, the CPR was probably high tech in 1968 when it was first introduced. \\xa0But now I think it\\u2019s a national menace. \\xa0Anyone who has your CPR can impersonate you. \\xa0So far it\\u2019s been mostly minimal damage. People give your CPR number when they get caught riding the S-train without a ticket. \\xa0Or people take out SMS loans using your CPR number. \\xa0But the potential for trouble is certainly large if the number that controls basically your entire life in Denmark is somehow hacked. \\xa0