The Social Security Number (SSN) is the key identity component in the United States used to identify and validate a person as well as track and use consumer information for decision making purposes. Unfortunately, SSN usefulness for achieving the goals listed above depends largely on the accuracy and completeness of the information in consumer credit reporting agency files as well as the integrity of the person claiming ownership of SSN. These are some of the risks which have been identified over the years by businesses.

Fortunately, there are ways to ensure the personal information businesses process for making decisions and running effective and efficient operations is accurate and complete. More specifically, businesses can now access the Social Security Administration’s database information to obtain additional information which would provide a higher confidence level that the SSN provided by a customer or employee belongs to the person. Such information includes gender, name and date of birth which can be matched to the person’s physical characteristics and other personal documents for validating the person. Unless a person’s identity is properly validated, other background information such as credit, education, or criminal would not matter much since the person is not who he claims to be. Read this article for benefits of SSN verification for individual identification.

There are a couple of other items I would like to bring up in this issue. First, I’m glad to announce that our blog articles are used by various educational institutions for teaching various information protection categories including Security Accountability for which Sam Houston State University requires its Fall 2011 students to read our website information to teach about corporate accountability and various security laws. Second, I heard that due to high gold values, thieves snatch necklaces and other valuable gold items from people so be a little more cautious when wearing these items in public.

For your convenience, recent articles posted on the identity theft awareness blog are listed below.

Until next time, be identity safe,
Henry Bagdasarian
Identity Management Institute
Identity Diet

Recent Consumer Articles

RFID Credit Cards - Do you know if you own RFID credit cards, what RFID is and what potential risks it may introduce? If you answered no to any of these questions, you should read this article.

Identity Reset - Identity reset is sometimes an available and last option to resolve severe cases of identity theft and fraud depending on whether the identity component has been affected permanently requiring reset.