Why Social Security Numbers should be revamped or done away with!
I was not surprised when I read this article about identity theft of children's social security numbers. People, brazen, good for nothing criminals are out there stealing our children's identity!
This is why I don't give out my children's SS number, they don't know it and they won't until they are 18. If my oldest wants it, which she had to when she was getting a part time job, it has to be a very good reason. I keep the cards until such time as I'm ready to give it to them.
One thing that does worry me though, I lost my son's social security card when he was a new born, in a wallet left in a cab in NY. Unfortunately I never got the wallet back. I didn't care so much about the money, and there was money in it, but I did care about the SS card. I told this to the Social Security office and they issued a new card for him. I still don't know if it's a new number or not. After reading this article, I'll have to find out.
I read the article I cut and pasted below on MSN Money online.
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Stolen innocence: Child identity theft
Now that infants and toddlers have Social Security numbers, identity thieves can run wild for years before victims grow up enough to take notice.
By Bankrate.com
Identity thieves have moved beyond adults in their quest for more victims. Now they're targeting children.
Law-enforcement officials and consumer advocates say criminals are stealing the Social Security numbers of children and using them to usurp the children's identities. Because the crimes usually aren't uncovered until the victims try to establish credit, they can go undetected for years.
Above 5% of the complaints the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, received in 2005 regarding identity theft were from individuals younger than 18.
"In terms of consumers who've contacted us, the number is growing," says Joanna Crane, an FTC spokeswoman. Complaints have risen 2% over the past two years.
The children's identities are used to obtain credit cards, get driver's licenses or open accounts. Often the information is sold for use by illegal immigrants or individuals attempting to restart their lives and avoid arrest.
Steve Frasher, a spokesman for Riverside, Calif., police, calls the thieves "phantoms." He says most don't use their real names, their addresses are fictitious or they live in abandoned residences, and they often order products by phone or online.
"Typically, we catch identity thieves through unrelated search warrants or traffic stops -- an officer may see large amounts of mail that do not belong to the suspect," Frasher says. "In some cases, the thief will have over 50 persons' identifying information."
Frasher suggests the best defense is vigilance. (Click here for seven steps you can take.)
The key to credit
Consumer advocates attribute the escalation to the early issuing of Social Security numbers and the overuse of these numbers.
A combination of names, addresses and other personal information is useful, but a Social Security number is the key that thieves use to provide themselves with unlimited access to credit.
Parents who want to claim their child for a tax deduction are required to have a Social Security number for a child older than 1. They can acquire the number for a newborn by applying at a Social Security office or by mail, or they can receive the child's number through the Enumeration at Birth program. This process, which began in 1989, enables parents to simply fill out the required information at a hospital.
Children receive numerous requests for their Social Security numbers as proof of identity from schools, medical and insurance companies, financial institutions, and cell phone providers.
No federal law forbids a vendor or organization from asking for a Social Security number.
Access granted
Contrary to common belief, credit agencies don't begin a credit history on an individual until the individual's identifying information is used to open a credit account. This information can include name, age, address and Social Security number.
Thieves bank on this and the fact that neither children nor their parents check to see whether credit reports already exist. This gives a thief an ample amount of time to create a new life using a victim's information.
Armed with the necessary information, the thief can fraudulently open bank, credit card and utility accounts, falsely obtain a job and file taxes.
Gabriel Jimenez was robbed of his identity when he was 12. Now a recent college graduate, he's been financially crippled by the dilapidated credit the thief left behind. He avoids credit and lenders, fearing high interest rates. He's attempting to get his credit report corrected, Social Security number changed and law enforcement's help. (Read more about his story.)
David Date of Santa Clara, Calif., discovered the misuse of his Social Security number a couple of days before New Year's in 2004, when he was 17.
He was attempting to open a checking and savings account at a Wells Fargo branch. The representative put Date's name, address, phone number and Social Security number into a computer. But something was wrong.
"They said, 'Are you sure this is your Social Security number?' I said I was absolutely sure," Date says. He went home to get the card.
"The banker told us that there was another Social Security number under a different person's name and suggested that we go to the police," Date recalls.
He and his father learned the person who misused Date's Social Security number had opened accounts at a Wells Fargo branch in Glendale, Calif. Date filled out a police report, but his father says nothing came of it because the crime was in another jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, Date was able to open an account under the same Social Security number. Letters were sent to the man also using the number to see whether he could present the Social Security card, but he didn't respond, so the bank terminated the account.
"It was total blind luck that I found out through that bank," says Al Date, David's father.
Debating the significance
One of the three credit major bureaus has observed a rise in complaints.
"We have established childidtheft@transunion.com because of the growing problem," says Diane Terry, the senior director of the Fraud Victim Assistance Department at TransUnion.
However, some federal officials say the number of people complaining is still small.
"While child identity theft is a very serious issue, it is not occurring at any significant rate," FTC spokeswoman Betsy Broder says.
Jonathan Lasher, the deputy chief counsel to the inspector general of the Social Security Administration, says cases of misuse of children's numbers are seen from time to time but not at a dramatic rate. Others disagree.
"We're only seeing the icing on the cake," says Paul Stephens, a policy analyst at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "There can be a very long time frame between identity theft and discovery, particularly with children."
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., acknowledged the danger to children in a statement issued after she introduced two proposals to give consumers more of a say in how companies buy, sell and market their personal information, and to provide more protection for consumers who have had their debit cards or card numbers stolen.
"Identity theft and the theft of our personal information is out of control," Clinton says in a written statement. "No one is safe, not even kids and young adults, as identity thieves carry out electronic muggings that can cost people cash and their credit records."
What's being done?
The FTC is taking steps to inform young people about credit through an education campaign. According to Crane, the federal agency has been distributing educational materials about prevention and recovery to teachers and other community leaders.
The Identity Theft Resource Center is working with lawmakers in an attempt to push forward a proposal that would create a list using birth records of all Social Security numbers and birth dates. The list would be provided to repositories, which could not sell, distribute or use it for other purposes, according to the center's testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee in 2003.
Credit applications submitted with the Social Security number of an individual on the list would be investigated. Once a child reached adulthood, the information would be deleted.
This article was reported and written by Brigitte Yuille for Bankrate.com.