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!

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?

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

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.

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.

duplicate post

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?)

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?

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 . 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)

Bingo. Rules As Written

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.

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

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.


Good idea!

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.)

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).

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Break the GM's nose & leave.

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.

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.

Hey Rotbart van Dainig, where abouts in Feral Cities do you see anything on SINs ?

I'm not the best repository of knowledge on RAW (SR4A) by any stretch but I was under the impression having a better rating on a SIN would give them less info, not more. And on top of that, that they are extremely hard to spot at a passing glance but require time, effort, and nuyen to see deeper into thus why a small local business checking it would be different than a local government and yet more different than the international corps that really run the show. Don't these damn things have some discretion (security encryption and authorization keys) on what detailed info they give out to everyone around them other than authorized checks? Do SINs not have a even a friggin pin code for authorization? Otherwise, I would treat them as no better than a driver's license or facebook page dependant on settings (which I would assume are minimal for a runner) in terms of the amount of detail you would get from it.

Otherwise, stalkers must friggin love the SR4A world, just take a few lessons in hacking a commlink or hire someone like a librarian and next thing you know you are hiding in their closet breathing hard. Not sure how there are shadows to run in if that is the case.

Which is where the whole idea of "fake SINs" falls apart. If you are a cop checking ID and someone comes back with multiple unique IDs what is the next thing you are going to do?

This!

I know total surveillance is plausible, but it doesn't make for a nice game (unless you go the Paranoia route).

I prefer to look at it like this: the government knows a lot of people lack SINs, and likes it that way; it removes all responsibility for providing social security, protection from crime etc. Rounding up the SINless is counterproductive. But should a SINless guy screw up, he also doesn't have much right to a fair trial; easy to find scapegoats for any fuckups.

Crypto doesn't work in SR.

So, yes, by RAW is works EXACTLY like that.

Your looking at it right and wrong. There are two ways that a SIN gets checked.

1) I am this person. This is your standard SIN check. They take the ID and match it to nth number of verification test. The more data the higher the test you can pass. This is what is generally thought of as a SIN check. Is this a valid number? Yes. Is this the person its registered too? Yes.

2) Who is this person? This is the one that gets you nailed (generally after the fact.) You left a fingerprint at a crime scene. LS finds it and runs it through the SIN databases it has access to. Opps there multiple IDs that match. LS now has list of alias; just like the real world.

So ironicly your safer leaving blood at a crime scene then fingerprints. Less SINs have DNA (other than real ones.)

Pretty much. There are two ways you use biometrics, authentication and identification.

Authentication is "is this the person that it claims to be"?

Identification is "Who is this person"?

If you are stopped by the cops and they run your biometrics, the biometrics are going to be run as an identification search. Like this example. Who do your fingerprints/DNA say you are and are there any hits in the forensics databases. Plus they will run the SIN, which will provide your picture, history, links to the biometrics that your SIN says you have, etc. if A<>B then you are not going to be continuing home.

I doubt the SIN will have much usable and easy to steal bio information. What it will have are lists of the account numbers ( like a drivers license) of where/who holds that information, which LS/KE possibly Mr J will have access to.
When whoever wants to search databases to find a match, it's no easy task, miss one database and you could fail to make a match.

The GM pulled the whole "I found your identity" crap out of his ass. Personally I can't play with GMs that I can't trust to run an even game, but that's me. And fire the fixer or at least get his loyalty rating above negative numbers. Seriously, he hates you.

I'd agree with that. Leave now.

I'd say it's just as likely that he's just the sort of guy that isn't cut out for GMing/STing/whatevering. He doesn't know how else to control a story, so he figures out a way to "trap" each character in order to put them soundly on rails, so that the story flows the way he wants the story to flow, with the PC's not doing much but rolling dice and playing along. Finding background flaws to exploit (for blackmail purposes) is a pretty handy way of doing it, and Shadowrun has enough ways to get at even the most well-hidden information (aura reading for some info, all the many types of hacking, bribing contacts, whatever laziness the ST cooks up this week)...

I'd pin this guy as stupid, in other words, not evil. The sort that's trying to run his story, not a story. All the SIN stuff is secondary to his attitude and methods, though, I certainly agree with that part.

Sorry, it's

So the stuff that is stored centrally is pretty limited and useless for reverse lookup.

In fact, they are stored and transfered only encrypted with Rating 6. Given that SR4 encryption prevents you from sniffing or downloading until you decrypted it, that means it's fairly safe when transmitting it - just... anyone who can hack your commlink is likely to get it after a while.

Blog has it right. Someone who acted like that on a first meet would be quietly (or not so quietly) removed from the local hiring pool - one way or another. Oddly enough, because the shadow economy is not protected by rule of law, it has to operate based on some level of mutual trust. Else no-one can hire and no-one will work.

Sigh, put your face in your palm, try to figure out which person that is, and complain to your co-workers at break that the IT department has still got bugs in the biometrics engine.

A Johnson that pulls that blackmail crap, face to face, in the first meeting must be new to the job since he's obviously not a corpse yet. He may get away with it with a newbie technomancer who are still somewhat persecuted, but anyone else would ensure that Johnson doesn't live to see sunrise. It's simply unprofessional. Also the Fixer has some explaining to do.

hmm if it were me as a technomancer... I would thread my rating 6 stealth to 10 add in my level 6 sprite to make it 16 hack into lonestar give this guy a file with the picture I just took of him with my eye recorder and his voice print I just took with my ear recorder and then call them to come collect his ass... Then I would spread the word about this guy around the shadows making sure that if he did live through the prison time he'd sure as hell never make it once he got out...

in debt flaw 5 bp means 5000 yen debt, not 50 000 yen.. so huge difference..

Perhaps. Or you might call for backup and let someone downtown talk it over with him.

Or stick out your palm, ask for "other identification" and cough.

Not only that, but you can only have -35 points in qualities. As we know the OP had 5bp for the sinner quality, the OP only had at most 30bp of in debt, which amounts to 6*5,000 = 30,000 capital, 45,000 after the initial interest. Of course, as the OP mentioned that none of this was in his backstory...




I look at Fake SIN's in a slightly diffrent way. Each one Rating 1-6 is valid. The difference is how much scrutiny each will stand up to. A rating 1 is fine at the stuffer shack buying a hotdog, they aren't in the business of catching criminals; but at the airport or if you're a troll at the Tir border, they do more digging.

A rating 1 just has the basic info, but has no history, it has no living adress, the Date of Birth is February 31st 2083; easy to see though with a bare minimum effort.

A rating three has basic info, with supporting evidence in a few easily hacked public nodes. If someone decides to check out the physician that signed your birth certificate, they will see he was only 21 and not out of school at the time.

Rating SIX is the best you can buy. You have a full collage transcript, and the University of Washington beleives that you attended. If someone was to go digging enough, they could find a copy of the paper you wrote in AP English history, only with A LARGE amount of digging could someone find the same paper submitted by someone else. You can purchase an airline ticket without a problem (until you draw attention to this SIN), you could even buy a Condo. The ready info on you is just "6'2, 190lbs Male Orc, Blond hair, Brown eyes, Must wear corrective lenses when driving" and a picture of you. Not your full DNA work up, to include each chromosome in full, along with a description of your Mystic aura.


I've heard some people on DS talk about how they treat the rating of the SIN as the threshold that the ID scanner has to beat in order to flag it as fake.

Also, I think that one of the idea's of shadowrun is that all these Corp's don't PLAY NICE with each other - if they did, we'd all be out of work. If Ares investigators come around to a MCT building asking to please have MCT's security tapes from last night, MCT will tell them to fuck off unless they have a court order - which is expensive. Same goes for their databases - does Horizon want EVO people "just checking some ID's" in their database? Corps hoard their data, and aren't going to hand it over when asked nicely.

Anyway, that's just my 2

This is close to RAW, Regardless of how you see the SIN in your game it really comes down to... You the GM rolls your scanner rating (1-6) and the Player rolls his fake SIN rating (1-6) and whoever has the most successes wins. If there is a tie then the scanner starts popping up questions for the player to answer to confirm such as whats your birthdate? where were you born? What color are your eyes? Where did you go to elementary school? Now you can ask these questions yourself and let the player answer them with roleplaying, or you can just ask for a CON test up to you. Either way that's really all there is to it for the SIN. I prefer to run things like this simple so long as players don't abuse their SIN too much (I have paranoid players, they only use stick N shock on missions so they never kill anyone. They constantly check their clothing for RFID's, They all have rating 6/6/6/6 commlinks running stealth 6 and analyze 6 (restricted gear quality)). As long as they continue to "play nice" in the shadows most corps don't put much time into tracking them down.

I'm not sure Con is that appropriate since the character is simply answering quite straightforward questions with answers he should know. I'd advocate Composure as a good stat to roll to reflect how natural they can make their answering seem.

That said, when it happens in my game I call for a Memory test to see how well the character can recall given details of his own fake ID. A failed roll indicates not recalling the fake datum as readily as one would recall a genuine datum.

You cannot get a court order.

Try to get a court order to search the Russian embassy.

Yes you can, from the Corporate Court.

Where are these Rules Written?

Solution: full auto into the Johnson. Then leave the game and never speak to that GM again.