Many insurance companies are now starting to use a different ID# than the SSN for this very reason. I expect within 2-3 years virtually all insurance cards will be SSN free.
I’ve often wondered about this. Everybody in my family carries around an insurance card with my dad’s SSN printed on it. Granted, it’s not labeled as such, but it’s not hard to figure out. So…that’s five different wallets whose loss could result in the theft of his identity. And he has absent-minded children. I should think it’d be a better idea for insurance companies not to do that…but then again, it’s probably the most convenient thing, and people don’t seem to be that protective of their numbers anyway.
I have Blue Cross Blue Shield. They just recently gave out new cards that no longer have the SS# as your member number on them.
They were wrong for doing this in the first place. Many people I work with took not of this and didn’t like it one bit.
The new ID card that I just got for my health insurance has the following line:
ID: Use Employee SSN 01
In other words, we have to give our SSN to any health care providers, then they add the digits 01 at the end to create the ID.
That’s certainly safer than having the SSN itself on the card.
Ed
This thread can not be complete without mentioning the case of the lady who worked for a billfold company in the earliest days of social security. I don’t see anyone has mentioned it yet.
Sorry I don’t have a link or exact details, but the company put a sample card in their billfolds, showing the lady’s actual number. It was just for sample purposes – over the years thousands claimed the number as their own.