Your Fake SIN and You, A discussion about SIN, Fake SIN, SINners and SINless. Options

[JRGeo]

System Identification Number.

What does it mean?

Hagfish, the Ork Technomancer, stalks the city looking for a classy place with classy people who have classy icons and just the right balance of leet speak and modern lingo. He steps into a nice looking cabana-themed place, and spots a couple of Orks mingling with a variety of other normal-looking chummers, so he knows he's cool to be here.

"I wanna I'm blending in, so I look around to see if most everyone is operating their Commlinks in hidden mode, or in active mode."

Hagfish notices that everyone here is running in Hidden mode. Mysterious. He turns his commlink to hidden mode before proceeding into the bar, noticing the presence of a few shady figures who seem to be waiting for someone, and certainly don't seem to belong. Those must be the guys he was hoping to meet, he'd set up an appointment ahead of time to receive a data retrieval job from a Johnson in this area and was told to look for a bald human with a chip missing from his ear.

There he was.

"Evening Chummer.", the Johnson said to him in an AR message, authored mentally and sent to Hagfish's comm.

The DM proudly asks someone to 'verify' his 6-success roll, on a 6-die pool. Impressive, but what was it for?

Oh, that was his roll to crack your SIN, and to discover that Hagfish was actually a SINner from another city. (SINner Flaw, 5BP) Yes, he discovered through this roll that you are using a fake SIN rather than your real one, and he knows what your real one is. He knows your real name, Besnik Tchulovick, and he knows where you used to live. He found out, with this roll, that you had left your previous city to escape a dept (In Debt Flaw, 5BP) of 50,000 nuyen, which you had borrowed from some high-ranking and far-reaching dangerous syndicate. (Hagfish's player tries to remember writing this into his backstory, because none of it seemed familiar.)

The Johnson grinned, for he knew that he had Hagfish by the balls, and proceeded to use the secrets he has learned about the young Ork to solicit free, dangerous technomancer runs. (For he knew this too, and Hagfish could not afford to be sold out to this dangerous syndicate until he could afford to pay back the 50,000 nuyen.)

"So Besnik, I hear you've been having money issues. Guess you should break into that Lonestar datavault for me, huh? I'll e-mail you the details."

Hagfish sat stunned. He was sure that he'd been in hidden mode. Had he stored his SIN so openly? Was his commlink so easy to violate? Didn't he get an opposed roll?!

But that's just my story, I'm sure you've all got your own! This thread is for discussing hilarious or BS stories about the use, abuse, or utter violation of the SINner flaw, and Fake SIN, and to a lesser extent about DM-abuse of such things.

How do you keep your SIN safe, as a SINner? How do you waterproof your Fake SIN? How do you create your own Fake SIN, and how do you get your official SIN erased? Tips, tricks, and stories!

[Ascalaphus]

Sounds a bit heavy-handed, don't you think?
- Did the player really put that in his background, or did his GM just add it?
- If Mr. Johnson can do that to you, you can do it to him
- Mr. Johnson should henceforth be considered a hostile hacker trying to blackmail you, not a runner, and should be shot in an alley as soon as possible. He's not paying you, so why be loyal?
- If he blackmails you to work for free, why should the rest of the team expect him to come through paying them?

[Surukai]

I haven't read through Unwired completely but I am pretty sure you "Load" your commlink with one sin and that if you're on fake sin, hacking your commlink will only reveal your fake SIN. Sure that can be verfied and found out to be false but that requires Johnsson to have some way to verify other's SINs (Something typically authorities or banks handling payments etc do).

I assumed that you also need to hack the commlink to obtain the false sin's biometric data so you can check that against some databases (entire matrix search, interval one minute in full VR right?) to find your real SIN and then hack that place to get any non-public data. I seriously doubt your official records have any info on your dept with shady loan sharks, right?

Either way, he needs to hack your Commlink and his 6 hits only gets him "user access" to your commlink if you have Firewall 6 or something like that. Just match his roll of 6 with your Firewall+Analyze(rating 6 optimie 2 to run on response 4 CPU) extended test with his stealth rating as threshold. Any serious runner will have to don rating 6 firewall + analyze (it costs a few thousand Nuyen, ANYONE can afford it) to prevent non-technomancers free on the fly access to your stuff without giving you a warning.

Add some encryption to delay him while your analyze figures out that somone is sniffing around in your commlink and then take Mr. Johnsson out to a back alley and get rid of the problem (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Aerospider]

WTH was that roll?
Intuition + Consult Resonance Realms On The Fly??

I'm comparatively clueless about commlinks, SINs, access IDs and the whole identification issue myself (I'll definitely be keeping tabs on this thread for some helpful pointers) but even I could probably give you half a dozen necessary rolls to hack that kind of detailed info, starting with a scanning test.

If the GM (sorry, I insist on not using 'DM') hasn't got a lot of explanation waiting for you behind a few days of legwork then he's fudging things way too far IMO.

[YuriPup]

Seems a bit much to me.

My runner has a fake sin, a com link that is only used with that fake SIN and fire arms that are fakely registered to the fake sin.

Aside from that, its not really a rules question...

Plot wise something like that should come up because the GM wants it to. The NPC in question could have 0 hacking and only use old manual typewrites but still have all that information.

And to my mind a Johnson that resorts to blackmail right off the bat 1) probably is burning whatever other jobs he wants to get through the shadows, ever 2) is a real threat to the PC and needs to be dealt with, probably fatally.

Really moments like that should be by plot rather than by roll.

And yeah, assuming you're not flipping SINs on the same link, I don't see how that was possible.

[YuriPup]

duplicate post

[Nightfalke]

Yeah, that sounds like plot driven NPC knowledge to me. It also sounds like the GM is making you work for your negative qualities as well.

As a GM, I have used this type of thing before, but only once and the Johnson in question was the "Director of Special Projects, Seattle Division" at Ares, who had been working with runners for over 10 years and had many commendations from the corporate office in Detroit for "thinking outside the box" and "creative budget management." And he also resorted to blackmail only after the face was being beligerant towards him. Instead of shooting the annoying PC in the face, he decided to use some of his own knowledge gained from a week or 2 of legwork to persuade the PC to take the deal.

I don't think I would go down that route again, because my PCs felt the same way as you do. (But at the same time...they never bothered to follow up with any legwork on Johnson of their own...*shrug* Don't you love it when your players ignore your plot hooks?)

[Surukai]

If your fixer has done her job right, your Johnson shouldn't have too much info on his hands about you other than the simple fact that you're a runner looking for work. I'd call my Fixer and ask her why she let out info about me to Johnson that let him do days worth of legwork before the meeting.

I'd like to see what kind of steps a Johnson would do if, following the rules, wanted to do a quick checkup on a runner when meeting with them. Things like checking profile and active sin and check what registered talent/gear/ware she got. (If the sin has a fake license, is a registered mage and so forth). What rolls can be done without actually hacking the runner's comm?

And the same rolls can of course be done by the runner to check up Mr. Johnson.


You scan for hidden nodes then try to check their AccessIDs against some database to try find if that AccessID have been used with a SIN recently and in that case, what SIN that is and followed by trying to get what easily obtainable info about that SIN there is (licences, gear, magic, etc.) or?

[BRodda]

OK for a RAW perspective it all depends on the level of your fake SIN. The better it is the more likely that someone can actually find your real SIN. This is tied directly to the verification that is required for each type of SIN check.


LVL 1: This check is a PIN number. Only good for purchases under 20 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) . No danger here.

LVL 2: Simple verification. Metatype, age and photo ID. Similar to info on a divers license today. Used for slightly more restricted purchases like beer. If they hack this they can just get when you claim to be born and how much you weigh and your eye color. And of course a good photo of you.

LVL 3: Simple Biometrics. Voice and fingerprints are recorded along with the previous information. If they hack this they can run a check of your fingerprints and they have a really good recording of what you sound like.

LVL 4: More Biometrics. Palm prints. and retnail scans. If they hack it it makes it even easier to find the real you.
LVL 5: Full Biometrics: Retinal scans and palm prints and other biometrics that we don't even have yet. If they get this they can probably find the real you very easily.
LVL 6: This contains FULL biometric data and even a DNA profile. If they hack this info they can check it against all known records and your screwed.

[Surukai]

LVL 1: This check is a PIN number. Only good for purchases under 20 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) . No danger here.

LVL 2: Simple verification. Metatype, age and photo ID. Similar to info on a divers license today. Used for slightly more restricted purchases like beer. If they hack this they can just get when you claim to be born and how much you weigh and your eye color. And of course a good photo of you.

LVL 3: Simple Biometrics. Voice and fingerprints are recorded along with the previous information. If they hack this they can run a check of your fingerprints and they have a really good recording of what you sound like.

LVL 4: More Biometrics. Palm prints. and retnail scans. If they hack it it makes it even easier to find the real you.
LVL 5: Full Biometrics: Retinal scans and palm prints and other biometrics that we don't even have yet. If they get this they can probably find the real you very easily.
LVL 6: This contains FULL biometric data and even a DNA profile. If they hack this info they can check it against all known records and your screwed.

Very useful list! Thanks a bunch for that, will make my GMing easier *hugs*

OOT: What do you mean by RAW (I've seen it on multiple places but not defined anywhere and search refuse to search for <4 letter words. Context have given me a hint that it has to do with some kind of unaltered version of rules or something)

[Nightfalke]

Very useful list! Thanks a bunch for that, will make my GMing easier *hugs*

OOT: What do you mean by RAW (I've seen it on multiple places but not defined anywhere and search refuse to search for <4 letter words. Context have given me a hint that it has to do with some kind of unaltered version of rules or something)

Bingo. Rules As Written

[Stry]

Although it is not about comlinks you check out a the chapter on cred sticks in the Neo Anarchist Guild to real life. Despite it being dated 1st/2nd SR book it provides good info on how SIN and money work in the sixth world.

[JRGeo]

OP here.

This Topic was intended to have two primary purposes; to collect SIN-related stories from both PC and GM points of view, and to discuss tips, tricks, and stuff like that for PCs to use, involving their SIN. It's intended to consolidate knowledge and advice about ID and SIN-security stuff.

That said, I'd like to clarify a few points about the story I posted. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) You know, for the lols.

• This particular story took place during the first session.
• The Fake SIN in question was rating 4.
• The GM admitted that it had no relevance to his plot.
• The GM is known for doing this type of thing, and enjoys humiliating PCs, and having them in his pocket.
• Etc...

Anyway, I'm not looking for advice on this particular situation, but advice in general. I've posted my messed-up story as a way of sharing the wealth of my experience with the world. ( And because, after this happened, I was forced to abandon my character in favor of a summoner to avoid getting bent over. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) I'll play my beloved Hagfish in a SR game that deserves him! )

[Aerospider]

[*]The GM is known for doing this type of thing, and enjoys humiliating PCs, and having them in his pocket.

A selfish and despicable practice – if I had to guess I'd put him down as a control freak who's turned to RPing to enjoy the illusion of power rather than the fun of communal story-telling. If you can get any fun out of games with this guy then good for you, but I'd have serious problems with this kind of attitude.

I'll play my beloved Hagfish in a SR game that deserves him!

Good idea!

[Ascalaphus]

OK for a RAW perspective it all depends on the level of your fake SIN. The better it is the more likely that someone can actually find your real SIN. This is tied directly to the verification that is required for each type of SIN check.

The problem is that RAW there isn't very much info on what exactly a SIN can or can't do/tell you.

While a real SIN would probably make it possible to find you name, residence, age etc, I doubt you get info on how much money someone secretly owes to a syndicate (different when there's a bounty posted, of course.)

[Dancer]

So how exactly was this Johnson supposed to have 'cracked' your SIN?

He can turn his attention to the fake SIN you're presenting and prove that it's a fake, but that doesn't exactly get him far. Of course it's a fake. He can extract all kinds of information from it, but 99% of that information is lies designed to disguise the 1% that had to be truth.

He can crack your commlink and rummage around, but unless Hagfish is a complete idiot he doesn't have his real SIN stored anywhere on there.

After that it's a matter of cracking into government databases to try and get biometric / face-recognition data to compare with whatever readings his cybernetic senses are getting of you - a hell of a task unless he's already narrowed the possibiliies of who you might be right down (and knows you're a SINner, else there's not much point).

[BRodda]

So how exactly was this Johnson supposed to have 'cracked' your SIN?

He can turn his attention to the fake SIN you're presenting and prove that it's a fake, but that doesn't exactly get him far. Of course it's a fake. He can extract all kinds of information from it, but 99% of that information is lies designed to disguise the 1% that had to be truth.

He can crack your commlink and rummage around, but unless Hagfish is a complete idiot he doesn't have his real SIN stored anywhere on there.

After that it's a matter of cracking into government databases to try and get biometric / face-recognition data to compare with whatever readings his cybernetic senses are getting of you - a hell of a task unless he's already narrowed the possibilities of who you might be right down (and knows you're a SINner, else there's not much point).

Ok let me put on my Evil GM hat for a second.

Step one: Hack the comlink to get the SIN. (Sounds like the GM did that.) Copy the biometric data that you can get.

Step two: Hack into a near by KE or LS comlink. (not that hard to do.)

Step three: Run an ID check (without the SIN) based on the biometric data. The more data faster you get a response and/or have fewer people to look through. If you have a fingerprint, they can probably track down your REAL SIN in about a minute.

Step four: Pay the 50 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) fee for running a credit check on the REAL SIN claiming to be a prospective landlord or car dealer. That should net you their credit history, current "Residence" and a few other bits of info like profession and if you owe money to legal institutions.


There is a reason why SINner is a 5BP Negative Quality folks.

[DireRadiant]

You can skip the cracking the commlink for the fake SIN. That shouldn't get you anything anyway other then matching results when you check it. You'll just be doing the Fake SIN rating versus Verification system check. R 4 fake SIN should be fine for most stuff.

p. 267 SR4A
"Whenever a character uses her fake identity to pass an ID check
(whether for buying a dress or crossing a border), she must make an
Opposed Test pitting her fake ID’s rating against the rating of the
verification system."

Where the SINner quality comes into play is if the Johnson runs an identification check without using the fake SIN. e.g. use some other biometric or method to track down the identity of the Runner. Johnson contrives to collect Facial recognition, retinal scan, fingerprints, DNA, magical aura, etc data and runs that data against available SIN checking systems. Because the Runner is a SINner, there is a match somewhere that will return a valid SIN when that data is queried. It's like running a fingerprint through the system today.

Note in all cases, it's not an absolute, there's always potential problems in getting matches. Just because there is a real SIN out there does not mean a correct match comes back every time full of exact data on the Runner.

[BRodda]

Note in all cases, it's not an absolute, there's always potential problems in getting matches. Just because there is a real SIN out there does not mean a correct match comes back every time full of exact data on the Runner.

The interesting thing I have found is that when you use biometric data to look for a SIN for someone you actually get all their really good fake SINs too.

[Nightfalke]

Where the SINner quality comes into play is if the Johnson runs an identification check without using the fake SIN. e.g. use some other biometric or method to track down the identity of the Runner. Johnson contrives to collect Facial recognition, retinal scan, fingerprints, DNA, magical aura, etc data and runs that data against available SIN checking systems. Because the Runner is a SINner, there is a match somewhere that will return a valid SIN when that data is queried. It's like running a fingerprint through the system today.

Note in all cases, it's not an absolute, there's always potential problems in getting matches. Just because there is a real SIN out there does not mean a correct match comes back every time full of exact data on the Runner.

And, also, if your fake SIN is good enough, or your biometrics have changed sufficiently since when your 'real' SIN was measured (reconstructive surgery, etc) the biometric search may well give the Johnson one of your fakes, as opposed to your 'real' SIN. The fun occurs when the Johnson tries to blackmail you using you fake SIN's info.

Edit: And apprantly BRodda types faster than I do. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[DireRadiant]

The interesting thing I have found is that when you use biometric data to look for a SIN for someone you actually get all their really good fake SINs too.

Always possible. This assumes all possible SIN sources are checked. Typically they aren't.

e.g. A Fake Ares SIN is usually verified with biometric data against the ARES SIN verification system. A fake EVO SIN verified against EVO. etc. So to get all fake SIN matches you would have to run the biometric verification request through all available systems to get a SIN from each one. First you would need access to all SIN Verification systems. Then you would need the level of access to those systems that allow you to return a SIN when you only submit biometric data. You will also get varying level of response from the SIN Verification systems. Some may not even answer.

Sure the data is out there, finding it and accessing it is a different matter.

[Warlordtheft]

Also consider the balkanization of data. A fake Ares SIN may not be on the SK database---which could pose issues. Worse, would be if another, or your real shows up. If it isn't in the system, they might pass it off and let you in. Though beyond a retail area why an Ares employee/citizen is on SK property is another issue entirely.

[Muspellsheimr]

• This particular story took place during the first session.
• The Fake SIN in question was rating 4.
• The GM admitted that it had no relevance to his plot.
• The GM is known for doing this type of thing, and enjoys humiliating PCs, and having them in his pocket.
• Etc...

Anyway, I'm not looking for advice on this particular situation, but advice in general. I've posted my messed-up story as a way of sharing the wealth of my experience with the world. ( And because, after this happened, I was forced to abandon my character in favor of a summoner to avoid getting bent over. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) I'll play my beloved Hagfish in a SR game that deserves him! )

Break the GM's nose & leave.

[Blog]

Bad GM

A contact acting like that would be a negative hit to their reputation. Which in turn would lead to them not having a job as no one will work for them.

Clearly they know too much, and should be given some new shoes down by the river.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

OK for a RAW perspective it all depends on the level of your fake SIN. The better it is the more likely that someone can actually find your real SIN. This is tied directly to the verification that is required for each type of SIN check.

Nope. It only depends on the claimed issuer, and what one would expect those SINs to have. Even the lowest level needs that basile info, higher levels are just done right.

Check Feral Cities for What's in a SIN.