I don’t get why individual social security numbers are now considered sensitive. I understand the concern that someone might open up a bank account-but that seems to me more about banks making a bad decision than something special about SS numbers.
People worry that it is a unique identifier and so should be private. Uh, no one has a problem with publicizing a person’s name and address. And that is just as a unique identifier and contains more information than a SS number. While there are many Jane Smiths in the world, there is pretty much by definition only one Jane Smith living at Apartment 123 on Smith Road New York. And even if Ms Smith moves that string continues to identify her. Jane Smith who lived at Apartment 123 on Smith Road New York is still the same person. Even if Joe Jones lives there now.
I don’t care that it is considered sensitive, it makes people more careful about private information, but I don’t understand why the SS is considered so special. Keeping one’s identity private seems almost a contradiction in terms-an identity that only you know is kind of useless and requiring someone else to keep such knowledge private is almost as much of a contradiction, and protecting SS numbers doesn’t accomplish this in any way I can see.
Automatically parsing a name and an address into a unique person is harder than using a unique number, but hardly impossible. So what is the point?
Because it’s the number that is used to sync up your credit report to you.
Someone getting a hold of your SSN and wrecking your credit, while not irreversible, is a pain in the ass. Considering that pretty much everyone in society relies on credit for their lives (housing, transportation), it’s a significant issue.
Knowing a name and address isn’t going to get you access to that person’s credit report.
Also, since we’ve had ID number creep, it has large use in medical records. You’re not going to learn about your neighbors medical problems with a name and address, but you will with a SSN (and you do some impersonation) (although now SSNs sometimes aren’t good enough - you may also need the DOB)
Because it’s become (against stated US government policy) your “ID Number”. Everyone uses it…medical records, welfare, medicaid, medicare (hell, your medicare account number IS your SSN plus a letter), credit reports…there’s a LOT of stuff hooked into that number, which makes it a keystone for identity theft.
*I say “stated”, because even the government uses it, for more than just your SS benefits. Medicare is a prime example, and I can say from experience that state/federal partnerships like welfare and medicaid use it as your ID number, as well.
You do have a point about there being only one Jane Smith at Apt. 123 on Smith Rd. New York, so why do we need the number, but let’s look at it this way. I know there’s only one Barack Obama living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington DC. If we just used name and address as a unique identifier, I can use that information to wreck his credit (or that of any other American friend I have that I know the address of). Addresses are commonly known, but a unique SS number is not. Which is why you’re supposed to keep it a secret.
agreed that a unique SS number seems to make impersonating another person easier. And it certainly links a lot of databases. It seems to me though that we are blaming the messenger. The SS number is a unique identifier. True. Organizations use a unique identifier to keep information tagged to a particular individual. But they use a person’s knowledge of that number as proof of identity. That seems to be the problem. No organization should use a piece of (almost) publicly available information as confirmation of identity. As I mentioned, there are lots of ways to create a string that uniquely identifies an individual. So we can use any of several pieces of information to keep database entries separate. Why fuss about the SS and try to keep it private? Use some other method for confirming the identity of the person. A more reliable method would simply work better.
a) SSNs aren’t almost publicly available. They’re the farthest thing from publicly available that I can think of.
b) Some other method would then be used and abused by those looking to benefit from doing so. And then that other method would become a piece of apparently almost publicly available information.
“Farthest thing from publicly available” is stretching it quite a bit. There’s public documents–particularly court records–that may have your social security number on them and are easily available to anyone who wants to look at them. I remember in the pre-internet days (well, before the internet was mainstream) finding someone’s social security number (and a sample of their signature) simply by walking down to the courthouse, requesting the docket for a case they were involved in, and voila, all the info I needed was right there.
And it’s a hell of a lot easier to do now, in the age of the internet. I assume that anyone who really wants to find my SSN can probably find it.
SSN is just one more piece of data to identify a person. If identity is important, the more pieces that can be presented, the better the ID can be. And the data that cannot be obtained from very public records like phone books is better quality data.
If I wanted to, I could masquerade as my neighbor – I know their address, their names, their auto license numbers, their phone numbers. I know who collects their garbage, who supplies their Internet connection, how much their property taxes are, and whether they have paid them. But I don’t know their SSN and that would be critical.
I wasn’t addressing that. I was addressing your claim that social security numbers are “the farthest thing from publicly available,” which is a stretch of a claim. Sure, you can’t just go to an SSN database and look one up, but I think it’s important for it to be clear that it’s not as secret as many think it is.
but, again, it’s not a stretch. it’s a piece of identifying information about someone that is the farthest thing from being publicly available. whether that’s very far or not, doesn’t change the relative privacy of the information.
Once again, I wasn’t responding to that. I was responding to what you initially wrote, which said “SSNs aren’t almost publicly available. They’re the farthest thing from publicly available that I can think of.” I’ll have an easier time finding some Dopers SSNs than figuring out their passwords, for instance.
Yes, context. rbroome was making the argument that SSNs are “almost publicly available,” and was speculating there should be a more secretive, more reliable way of confirming identity. I more-or-less agree with him. Your statement that “SSNs are not almost publicly available” overstates how secret they are. I would say characterizing their availability as “almost publicly available” is more accurate than not.
What is your problem? There’s a factual question here, there was a factual statement made on how publicly available social security numbers are, and I made a factual statement that they are, in many cases, indeed publicly available through court documents. Many people do not know this. How am I not contributing relevant information to this thread?
Here’s a link to how bad the situation is in regards to the public availability of SSNs, and here’s the website of an activist who is trying to get more and more states to redact this identifying information. It appears that the laws have been changing in the last few years precisely because of the internet, but I find it interesting and supportive of rbroome’s concerns.
They used to be nowhere near as secret - when I was in college not that long ago your SSN was your student ID, under which they published your test scores and such. (I believe in high school as well.)