Something registered against your ID

Question

Recently I read an article with the title :

How to check all the phone numbers registered against your identity card.

Is use of preposition against correct here? I thought why not use the preposition to? As in, how to check all the phone numbers registered to your identity card?

If against is correct here, what is the general rule to use against like this? For example, one of the general rules of preposition against is that if something is close to, hitting, or touching something else, we use against. As in,

I was leaning against the wall.

In the title of that article, what is the general rule to use against like that?

Answer 1

The OED gives one meaning of "against" as "Indicating a thing to which reference is made in order to verify or measure something else." (9c). This is a specific example of a general meaning where something is put next to something: "Connecting two quantities compared or opposed to each other, such as numbers of votes, scores, percentages, etc." (9b) It is as if you were writing the two things next to each other in a ledger or record book.

In this specific case, I assume a phone number must be connected with an ID number indicated by an ID card (for instance when you buy a phone or have a phone line connected). To say "a phone number is registered against an ID card" means that each phone number is associated with some ID. In "How to check all the phone numbers registered against your identity card", the instructions are to find all phone numbers connected to a specific ID card/number.

A similar real world example is (from hospital statistics documentation): "The clinician ... should be recorded against the corresponding operation". This is a case of putting a name against a (medical) operation. (Recorded and registered being near-synonyms.)

It also closely relates to the meaning of "against" in finance: "Indicating an asset which forms the basis of a financial activity". Here, a loan or debt is set off against an asset, again in a ledger. I found an example of this: "The Check will tell you whether a vehicle you are looking to buy has any outstanding insurance interest recorded against it".

Other prepositions would work fine: to or with. But against is also OK, and maybe sounds a bit more formal or businesslike in this example (as in the clinical example I quoted), giving the person's "How to" a more authoritative air.

Reference: "against, prep., conj., adv., and n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, December 2022, www.oed.com/view/Entry/3754. Accessed 18 January 2023.

Answer 2

Check against is a phrase meaning:

(check something against something) to find out whether information is accurate or useful by comparing it with other information

• The police are checking his fingerprints against their database. (Macmillan)

Indeed, against can be used with the connotation of comparison. One of the meanings given by M-W is:

compared or contrasted with

• profits are up against last year

Answer 3

The choice of preposition here is very flexible, but it changes over time as well...

As you can see, two centuries ago we preferred against (with a somewhat different sense), a century later we'd switched to with, and today we like to.

The preference for to today is so strong that non-native speakers who aren't sure should always use it. But I wouldn't presume to tell competent native Anglophones which to use, and of course all of us have to accept that texts written decades or centuries ago will often deviate from today's norms.

Obviously there's no significant difference in meaning. It's not like the concept of "registering" meant anything significantly different to Victorians! (I hope no-one is going to claim that you and your ID should adhere to different syntactic standards! :)