From some television station that wants to be known as "ABC15":
All Jill Carlon wanted was a new Social Security number for her daughter. The girl was the victim of ongoing identity theft problems. For seven years, Carlon said the Social Security Administration's Phoenix office denied her requests, even after Carlon changed the girl's name on advice from a Social Security caseworker.
In April, ABC15 aired the story of Carlon's daughter and the fight to clear the credit history attached to her Social Security number even though she was just 14 years old. Two days later, Carlon said, the Social Security Administration called her and offered to issue the child a new number.
The story caught the attention of Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D) 9th District. Sinema had recently introduced a bill that would streamline the Social Security verification process for obtaining credit, making it harder for people to commit synthetic identity theft.
The bill eventually passed and was signed into law by President Trump. After seeing Carlon's story, Sinema sent a letter to the Social Security commissioner. ...
I think that Social Security's attitude may be: Your problem is with credit reporting agencies who are reporting phony information. Why are you asking us to solve the problem? Why is it easier for Social Security to solve the problem than the credit reporting agencies?Sinema said the agency has now instructed all of its local offices to never advise someone to change their name in order to get a replacement number. Also, Sinema said regional experts are now assigned to provide guidance to local offices and caseworkers with complex cases. Also, she said caseworkers will have more leeway in determining when a new number is warranted. ...
4 comments:
Because spending the government's money to keep private organizations from having to upend their business model is just how Congress rolls. It's much easier to make SSA mess with this than actually make the credit issuing organizations cease using the SSN. Just shows how clout works; the group that caused the problem gets the victim to pay for the cleanup.
The problem is with the local managers, who have to approve issuance of a new SSN. 99% of them won't do it under any circumstances, even for those that easily meet the policy requirements to be issued one.
And, denial of a new SSN doesn't have an appeal process. So, the people who ask for one and are denied don't have any recourse.
I always tell deserving folks who are denied an SSN they should contact their congressional representatives and pursue it through them. It is the only way they'll ever make any headway.
Actually, the 14 year-old girl is the victim. SSA is merely inconvenienced by having to help her. But, you are right that Congress needs to do something to help the victims of identity theft. It needs to be more difficult with harsher penalties. However, most Democrats won't do anything about it, because it would make it so much harder for illegal aliens to work. Some Republicans won't support it for the same reason. Mollie Tibbets in Iowa was murdered ("allegedly") by an illegal alien who was working due to identity theft. His Republican employers didn't try too hard to make sure he (or any other of their illegal employees) were actually lawfully able to work in the US.
The 14 year old girl is the victim of a financial credit evaluation scheme that took the SSN and made it a national identifier and their low bar key to financial fraud. Fixing her SSN is a band aid and does nothing about the real problem and in that both she and the SSA are victims. Identity theft with credit implications are SSN based and in that area, making the credit bureaus transition to another identifier can and should be done. Medicare has done it. The financial services industry could do so and still have most of their billions of annual income.
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