From an op ed in the New York Times:
... Consumers are asked for their Social Security number perhaps dozens of times each year: by banks, by utility companies, by their health care providers, by government agencies, even by websites. Every time the number is given, the odds go up that it will fall into the wrong hands. Still, America’s identification system relies on the fantasy that these nine digits are a secret. Publication of the full Social Security number list would shatter that fantasy and force the banking industry to invent new and genuinely effective ways to protect consumers from identity thieves.
It seems that has finally occurred. The Equifax credit-reporting agency is being terribly, dangerously vague about its stunning loss of “potentially” 143 million Social Security numbers. The data belong to roughly three-quarters of Americans with a credit report. Might as well be everyone.
Whatever the company finally admits to, this much is certain: Social Security numbers are no longer a secret.
These numbers were created for a single purpose: to track worker contributions to a national retirement fund. Until the 1970s, the cards even arrived printed with the warning “Not for identification.” It’s time we heeded that warning and stopped using the number for applications of any kind. For loans, for jobs, for cellphones. It’s going to be very expensive, but the jig is up.
Identity theft is an unfair shifting of costs. It has always been cheaper to avoid investment in security upgrades and instead push the real costs of this system onto victims, who spend hours cleaning up the messes left behind. They sometimes even pay a monthly fee for protection from a system they never asked to be a part of in the first place.
This fragile authentication arrangement based on Social Security numbers persists so that retailers and banks can offer easy credit. Walk in with a number and a name, walk out with a new TV and a credit card. As long as a credit score attached to the Social Security number listed on the application is high enough, many creditors are more than happy to make that snap decision and take the risk. ...
Just please let the Social Security Administration continue using Social Security numbers.Social Security numbers were never designed to be a security tool, and their usefulness for that purpose has run its course.
Until legislation is passed, any knew identification format that SSA or CMMS would establish would eventually be adopted by the private sector as the go-to format for tracking financial history, work activity, medical billing and debt collection. This is on Congress to pass the law because regulations alone cannot restrict this.
ReplyDeletePresuming companies will still use SSN as a security feature, why doesn't SSA just implement a two-step authentication procedure? This would certainly, at the least attempt, to verify the individual requesting the information. For companies make them input a random code, plus their EIN. For debit, bank's routing number and random code. It seems like if using SSN as a security measure was never intended, just overlay security on top of the SSN.
ReplyDelete11:44 AM, thank you!!!!!
ReplyDeletea workable solution is right there for the implementing.
Medicare cards are coming soon without SSNs on them.
ReplyDeleteThe SSN is intended to link a workers wages to their earnings record. Just how do you see using 2 factor authentication? Have the employee authorize the submission by the employer when he submits a w2 file electronically? If I have to give the SSN to the employer to do that, what's the point? Any other use of the SSN shouldn't involve taxpayer dollars being misspent to implement, run and maintain a "fix" for a problem that is not SSA's problem, but the financial industries. Let them spend their money to fix it.
ReplyDeleteThe military installations have stopped putting Soc Security numbers on Retiree ID cards almost 5 years ago.....I think they may be on to something?
ReplyDeletePrior to entities using SSN's they had their own ID numbers. It was very simple process that companies used their own identifying numbers and why SSN's were allowed to be used for all transactions was an ID theft waiting to happen. I thought that using the SSA numbers for anything other than SSA or Medicare business was against federal law. That no one could demand use of the SSN # or have to give the SSA # out. I believe the federal govt was totally remiss on not demanding that our SSN's not be used for anything other than dealing with the SSA & Medicare and at fault of stolen SSA # info fiasco.
ReplyDeleteI haven't believed in my SSN as safe and unknown to anyone else but me since I believed in Santa. School records, military records, at one time the DMV, my bank, medical records and on and on and on and on.
ReplyDeleteI think its funny when everyone gets up in arms about the SSN when it is literally scattered all over the place.