Looks like everyone's Social was stolen, just lovely

[EACarlson]

Not sure how that started happening as the cards said right on them "Not for Identification " until recently.View attachment 886297

That was part of the original SS law, then congress decided to get rid of that part of it, just like they've done with all of the things that allowed it to pass in the first place.

 

[neverlandsky]

Download the Credit Karma app. It's free and you can keep track of your credit score, accounts, & activities. I wouldn't freeze credit unless you're a victim of financial fraud in which case you would file a police report for and fill out affidavits with the financial institution. We've had our identity stolen a couple of times. It was a pain to unfreeze credit when we wanted to do something.

 

[Skippy918]

My SS was my student id too at college. So it was on every test I took from 1990-1994.

Mine too. It was printed on our ID cards. When professors would post final grades, it was on paper on the walls in the building with the first 6 x’d out.

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

I heard something about this today... Not sure whether or not it will become a problem.

 

[dizneegirl]

My dad engraved my SS# onto the items I took to college that he thought might get stolen. I have a metal mixing bowl with my SS on the bottom of it to this day...

 

[Mai Ku Tiki]

I have yet to see this reported on any news sites I consider reputable.

Our data has been hacked multiple times through various businesses and I get credit alerts whenever I open a new account

Just saw this FWIW:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/15/bil...curity-numbers-and-data-stolen-allegedly.html

 

[kdonnel]

Download the Credit Karma app. It's free and you can keep track of your credit score, accounts, & activities. I wouldn't freeze credit unless you're a victim of financial fraud in which case you would file a police report for and fill out affidavits with the financial institution. We've had our identity stolen a couple of times. It was a pain to unfreeze credit when we wanted to do something.

It takes me all of 1-2 minutes to unfreeze my credit each time I have needed to let someone have access.

Speaking as a victim of identity theft, it is much simpler to not be a victim. The easiest way to not be a victim is to have your credit frozen.

Had my credit been frozen, I would never have had a corporation registered in my name, a bank account opened for that corporation, a credit card merchant account opened for that corporation, and then had to deal with the result of $70,000+ of other peoples stolen credit cards run through the account.

I had to get the Georgia Secretary of State involved who got the Georgia State Attorney office involved so I could sue the State of Georgia to make sure it was on record that I was not associated with the company that had been registered in my name.

I spent about 80-100 hours on the phone dealing with the police, ensuring none of this was reflected on my credit report, and dealing with the bill collector who wanted to be paid for the credit card device that had been purchased but never paid for in my name.

I ended up a named plaintiff of class action suit against Anthem Blue Cross and spent another 20-40 hours dealing with that including having all my electronics imaged and an 8 hour day being deposed.

If my credit had been frozen then they would have never been able to open the bank account and would have committed the fraud with someone else's identity.

Credit monitoring is a good idea but falls short because by the time you are notified the damage is done.

Everyone who does not have their credit frozen is asking for trouble.

 

[barkley]

My dad engraved my SS# onto the items I took to college that he thought might get stolen. I have a metal mixing bowl with my SS on the bottom of it to this day...

that's one that probably should NOT get tossed in the charity pile during a household purge

but yeah-i remember having my ssn printed on my checks back in the day. i remember college grades posted on the door or passed around on a clipboard with none of the numbers blocked out. there is a reason some of us of a certain age have our numbers memorized-they were our alternate names for many purposes back in the day.

 

[CGB]

I turned 16 in 1973 and my first Drivers License had my SS number on it.

We were stationed in Kansas in the 1990s. Our drivers' license numbers were our social security numbers. A few years ago, someone wrote a bad check at Wal-Mart and made up a fake NC driver's license number that was my social exactly. The amount of chaos that caused in our finances was incredibly hard to clear up. Wal-Mart HQ didn't care; I had to investigate it on my own. If it hadn't been for the older lady working the night shift at the actual Wal-Mart where the check was written, I would have never gotten it cleared up. She must have heard the desperation in my voice, went and found the actual check, and then up-channeled the issue on her side. It took me months to straighten it out.

 

[georgina]

Just saw this FWIW:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/15/bil...curity-numbers-and-data-stolen-allegedly.html

ALLEGEDLY.

An alleged hack at a background check company grabbed headlines this week for potentially exposing billions of social security numbers. Don’t panic, though — this incident is par for the course as companies amass data on consumers, cybersecurity experts say.

The data in question appeared on hacker forums in April and contains millions of rows of data, some of which are authentic names and social security numbers, multiple cybersecurity researchers told The Washington Post. Still, the scale and severity of the alleged breach has been overstated in some reports, they said. It’s still unclear how much of the data is genuine and whether it all really came from hacking a company, as opposed to scraping publicly available sources.

Posters in hacking forums claimed responsibility for the breach and offered to sell or share the data, which they said included personal information from billions of people across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. While researchers have confirmed the authenticity of some data, the set is large enough to suggest some fake or reused data, security expert Troy Hunt told The Washington Post

James E. Lee, chief operating officer at Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit that helps consumers deal with fraud, said that there is “nothing new” about this particular data haul and that SSNs already circulate online.
“The steps you need to take today are the steps you needed to be taking for years,” Lee said.

 

[hertamaniac]

That is weird. We just bought a new car in February, had a trade in & the rest cash. No credit check required. However, this is a dealership we have been going to for a long time & have purchased & financed several cars from. Don’t know if that made a difference. He new car is in both of our names. Our credit monitoring shows no inquiries for either of us.

This was a dealership in Orlando that I've never been to before and used a personal check. I did find it odd, but they said it was their policy. In my case, it had a negligible impact that it didn't concern me.

 

[hertamaniac]

That's really strange. If that had happened when we were purchasing our car with cash, they'd have lost the sale. There's absolutely no reason for a credit check when paying cash.

Normally I would agree, but I targeted a particular vehicle make, model and trim level that I wanted for about a year. This was the only dealership in the state of Florida that had exactly what I wanted. Perhaps this dealership had some negative experiences with customers giving them personal checks in the past and needed some means of qualification.

The credit pull didn't give me any reason for concern.

 

[focusondisney]

This was a dealership in Orlando that I've never been to before and used a personal check. I did find it odd, but they said it was their policy. In my case, it had a negligible impact that it didn't concern me.

Ah, maybe that’s it. Our dealership doesn’t accept personal checks, has to be a cashier’s check.

 

[shh]

Does anyone know if having lifelock is helpful if you are a fraud victim? Not talking about protecting your credit - freezes can do that - but they promise to do a lot of legwork for you afterwards if you are victimized.

The experiences of kdonnel upthread aren't unique: I've read of many others saying they've lost 20, 30 or more painful hours over months, even years, to fix the damage. I dread to think of the time and stress involved.

Wondering if Lifelock really helps with that or it's just lip service/a misleading claim and the person still has to do most of the work themselves?

 

[Mai Ku Tiki]

ALLEGEDLY.

An alleged hack at a background check company grabbed headlines this week for potentially exposing billions of social security numbers. Don’t panic, though — this incident is par for the course as companies amass data on consumers, cybersecurity experts say.

The data in question appeared on hacker forums in April and contains millions of rows of data, some of which are authentic names and social security numbers, multiple cybersecurity researchers told The Washington Post. Still, the scale and severity of the alleged breach has been overstated in some reports, they said. It’s still unclear how much of the data is genuine and whether it all really came from hacking a company, as opposed to scraping publicly available sources.

Posters in hacking forums claimed responsibility for the breach and offered to sell or share the data, which they said included personal information from billions of people across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. While researchers have confirmed the authenticity of some data, the set is large enough to suggest some fake or reused data, security expert Troy Hunt told The Washington Post

James E. Lee, chief operating officer at Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit that helps consumers deal with fraud, said that there is “nothing new” about this particular data haul and that SSNs already circulate online.
“The steps you need to take today are the steps you needed to be taking for years,” Lee said.

ALLEGEDLY.

An alleged hack at a background check company grabbed headlines this week for potentially exposing billions of social security numbers. Don’t panic, though — this incident is par for the course as companies amass data on consumers, cybersecurity experts say.

The data in question appeared on hacker forums in April and contains millions of rows of data, some of which are authentic names and social security numbers, multiple cybersecurity researchers told The Washington Post. Still, the scale and severity of the alleged breach has been overstated in some reports, they said. It’s still unclear how much of the data is genuine and whether it all really came from hacking a company, as opposed to scraping publicly available sources.

Posters in hacking forums claimed responsibility for the breach and offered to sell or share the data, which they said included personal information from billions of people across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. While researchers have confirmed the authenticity of some data, the set is large enough to suggest some fake or reused data, security expert Troy Hunt told The Washington Post

James E. Lee, chief operating officer at Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit that helps consumers deal with fraud, said that there is “nothing new” about this particular data haul and that SSNs already circulate online.
“The steps you need to take today are the steps you needed to be taking for years,” Lee said.

Yes. ALLEGEDLY. That's why I posted FWIW. But it's not reasonable for people to assume "privacy" after we give Google & other platforms so much access.
The irony is that the steps we're told to take to have it all monitored against ID theft require giving all of our info to "reputable" companies who are then hacked (Equifax 2017)
" ...there is “nothing new” about this particular data haul and that SSNs already circulate online."

 

[gottalovepluto]

Download the Credit Karma app. It's free and you can keep track of your credit score, accounts, & activities. I wouldn't freeze credit unless you're a victim of financial fraud in which case you would file a police report for and fill out affidavits with the financial institution. We've had our identity stolen a couple of times. It was a pain to unfreeze credit when we wanted to do something.

Disagree. I have all 3 credit bureaus frozen and it takes about 5 mins total to unfreeze them for whatever dates I want on their websites. I freeze and thaw a couple times a month direct with each bureau as I chase bank bonuses and credit card bonuses, if you can log in to a website you can freeze and thaw your credit. They all thaw within 15 mins of a request.

Everybody should have all 3 credit bureaus frozen for themselves and their kids.

 

[neverlandsky]

Disagree. I have all 3 credit bureaus frozen and it takes about 5 mins total to unfreeze them for whatever dates I want on their websites. I freeze and thaw a couple times a month direct with each bureau as I chase bank bonuses and credit card bonuses, if you can log in to a website you can freeze and thaw your credit. They all thaw within 15 mins of a request.

Everybody should have all 3 credit bureaus frozen for themselves and their kids.

Must have been just us over 15 years ago when we did it. The process sucked. Glad to hear it's a lot easier.

 

[Threehearts]

I have been doing family genealogy for the past few years and if a relative had a SS number then I see it. I have several generations of my extended family's SS numbers. They are included in the most basic of searches. Mine is too. They are also available on people searches as well- free of charge. So yes, our socials are very public.

 

[LynnTH]

Ive been thinking of freezing my credit for a couple years. Just never have done it. I just feel like I’m going to forget the once every 10 years I need it unfrozen haha. But this was enough of a push to make me do it.

It was very easy. Only one is equifax which is sending something for me to complete it. To set up all three (Experian and TransUnion are finished) took maybe 10-15 minutes. Looks like it’s simple to just go in there and unfreeze it when need be.

I finally bit the bullet and signed up too. (Will need to get DH and my kids to do the same). Equifax was the same with me. They too are sending me something in the mail as they could not authenticate my identity.....

 

[kdonnel]

Does anyone know if having lifelock is helpful if you are a fraud victim? Not talking about protecting your credit - freezes can do that - but they promise to do a lot of legwork for you afterwards if you are victimized.

The experiences of kdonnel upthread aren't unique: I've read of many others saying they've lost 20, 30 or more painful hours over months, even years, to fix the damage. I dread to think of the time and stress involved.

Wondering if Lifelock really helps with that or it's just lip service/a misleading claim and the person still has to do most of the work themselves?

My understanding is that among other things, lifelock places a fraud alert on your credit report.

You can do the same if you want on an annual basis. Used to be you had to do it every 90 days but I believe now it works for a year at a time.

When I had my identity used fraudulently I used the police report to get a seven year fraud alert. During that seven year period whenever I needed to use my credit, not only did I have to unfreeze my credit but I had to prove my identity through a phone call. It meant that things that normally would have been fully automated instead had me waiting on the manual follow up process. The fraud alert places a number on your report and instructions to use it to ensure the person asking for credit is really the person in the credit report.

It was an annoyance but not unmanageable. I remember only having to go through the process a handful of times during the 7 years the fraud alert as on my credit reports.

Not sure if Lifelock is worth it.