Are you a SINner?, SIN vs SINless Options

[mayhem]

[TinkerGnome]

A SIN is made with a forumla which includes your initials, year of birth and state of birth. No other data is used in creating it. That aside, while your spending habits might get tracked, nothing else is collected as a matter of course. Hell, even criminal SIN files only sometimes contain DNA coding (they always contain biometric scans such as fingerprints, voice print, iris, etc. as well as photographs, etc.). Making them the end-all be-all of personal identification is not supported by the text in SSG (at least, in general, some corps may do it differently).

Credsticks and SINs are different things, though. While your SIN doesn't contain those biometrics automatically, they gradually come into play as the grade of your credstick changes. A silver+ credstick requires you to start storing biometrics somewhere. Additionally, credsticks hold all of your personal papers, licences, etc., for easy reference.

Also, what goes with your SIN varies by country/corp. The various players only share data because the corporate court has ordered them to, and they do their best to keep the data they share as incomplete as possible (except in matters of joint interest, probably).

Good references for what the SIN is and is not are in the SSG p 37-40.