askye | (no subject)

This morning I got a phone call from some company that wante3d to consolidate "(Dad's name)'s student loans". He woke me up so I was kind of pissy. When I said that no, I wasn't the Dad, he asked if there was a wife or child he could speak to, I told him no there wasn't and why was he calling anyway Dad graduated in the 70s. The caller told me that there records show Dad signed or co signed a loan for someone and did I have siblings that he could have signed for? I told the guy no, I don't know anything about this. He got frustrated with me and I got even more pissy and said "It's none of your business! Don't call!" and he hung up.

But it got me thinking, if I originally played along and pretended to be Dad, could I have gotten information about my Dad out of this guy? I don't know what kind of information I had but now I wish I could have found out.

Also, Mom was complaining about this class she was taking, it's a professional development class and on the sign in sheet you have to put your name and social security number. It's a sheet that just sits out there for any one to see, but Mom only puts the last 4 digits. Anyone could have looked at the numbers, written them down, and started compiling information. Business use social security numbers, or at least the last four digits all the time for verification purposes. Say, someone saw the information and wrote down someone's name and ss#, they'd just have to look up the person in the phone book or online to get their address. Armed with that information a theif could do a lot of damage.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Did you know you can narrow down the state where someone was born with just the first three digits of their ssn?

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/employer/stateweb.htm

Same in Canada - different provinces have different lead numbers.

I don't get why any place required SIN (or SSN) these days. Okay, sure, passport offices and other government agencies...

For a long time SSNs have just been everyone's default id number. I know when I was in community college we gave it out for everything. When I lived in Georgia your default drivers license number was your SSN, unless you requested that it not be (they may have changed this).

Most companies will let you switch from using the last 4 digits to a password, but you have to specifically ask for that. I've switched with Comcast (now that I'm getting cable again), the phone company, and something else I can't think about. My doctor's office id number is my SSN, except I don't have to give it out, I do have to use it to access the voice mail where they live test results.

If I remember correctly it says in the Social Security Act that your number isn't supposed to be used as an id number, but I maybe misinformation I read.

Wow, your cable company needs your SSN? That's very odd. Up here (at least in SK and NS) you have different numbers for everything; dl, medicare, etc.

I don't know if they need my whole number but they want the last 4 digits and it drives me nuts. They actually already had the digits from the time I got cable before.

The next time a business asks for that information I'm going to refuse on grounds of privacy and worry about identity theft.

You'd really think a valid CC# would be more important, though I'm quite sure I didn't need anything like that to get hooked up for phone, cable, oil, etc.