Identity Theft Using Social Security Numbers
One of the most destructive methods of identity theft involves your account with Social Security. Your Social Security number can give anyone access to your entire financial life. If you routinely carry your Social Security card, you're taking a significant risk with your identity.
Are you one of those people who shred every document with your social security number on it before sending it out to the trash? Not many people do, and identity thieves count on it. Many of them will troll suburban neighborhoods poking through bags of trash in hopes of finding a document with someone's name and Social Security number. Carelessly handled trash also allows nogoodniks to take advantage of your many credit cards and bank accounts as well.
Once someone has their mitts on your Social Security number, they can get access to your entire life. Not only can they access your existing bank accounts and lines of credit, but they can also create new ones. They can take out a mortgage on an expensive property, or several. They can obtain a driver's license in your name, or even obtain utilities such as electricity, gas and phone service in your name. They can literally build an entire life for themselves, masquerading as you.
Sometimes they are clumsy enough that they end up being arrested, but it often comes only after your good name and credit record have been ruined. Depending on the thief's motives in stealing your Social Security number, you may have a simple financial problem that goes away once you prove that the liabilities were contracted fraudulently, or you may end up having illegal immigrants coming into the country under your name for years or even decades and working on the basis of your right to work in this country.
No matter what was done using your Social Security number, it will take a lot of your time and energy to rectify. You may have to get a new Social Security number, which means having to make sure that your previous years of hard work paid into the system do not suddenly disappear, especially if you are near retirement. You may also have to deal with the IRS, especially if people have worked illegally under your Social Security number and the IRS thinks that you owe income tax on that earnings. If the thieves bought property with their ill-gotten gains, the IRS may well think that you must've bought it with unreported income, and then you will be stuck struggling to prove that somebody else bought those properties fraudulently in your name. Even after you do have your life straightened out, the IRS still may want to watch you very closely for years to come, and no one really wants to deal with regular audits putting every aspect of your financial life under a microscope.
Because criminal identity fraud using Social Security numbers is becoming so common, be sure to take a few steps to safeguard yours. Avoid using it for an ID number on things unrelated to your income and Social Security account. Do not give it to people who call you, even if they claim to be from a bank, the IRS or the Social Security Administration. As them for contact information and follow up to make sure that they are indeed who they claim to be. By making sure that your Social Security number does not fall into the wrong hands, you can go a long way to protecting yourself from identity theft.
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