Talk about a no brainer. U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York is pushing legislation that will force the removal of Social Security numbers from Medicare cards and communications from Medicare.
Forty million Americans carry Medicare cards with their Social Security number on them. They also receive letters and other communications from Medicare that include their Social Security numbers. As a result, these people are at an increased risk of identity theft if their cards or communications from Medicare are compromised.
“Listing Social Security numbers on Medicare cards needlessly leaves millions of New Yorkers susceptible to identity theft,” said Gillibrand. “We must protect Medicare beneficiaries by deterring identity theft. Removing Social Security numbers from Medicare cards is simple step to help keep our seniors personal information secure.”
The proposed legislation, aptly named the Social Security Number Protection Act, would eliminate the display of Social Security numbers on Medicare cards and would stop the Department of Health and Human Services from collecting Social Security numbers and from listing Social Security numbers in communications to Medicare beneficiaries.
I think this legislation is long overdue and, based on what I've read (which does not include the text of the proposed legislation), is a no brainer. Good to see someone in Washington proposing something useful. Good job, Senator Gillibrand!
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Showing posts with label Social Security numbers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Security numbers. Show all posts
July 20, 2011
February 12, 2011
Can answering 2 simple questions on Facebook really give ID thieves the key to figuring out your SSN?
No. Despite an article I just read on Cincinnati's Fox19.com. This is just not accurate, or at least not in the manner in which Fox19.com claims.
According to Fox19.com, truthfully answering the Facebook profile questions regarding where you were born and how old you are gives identity thieves enough information to reverse engineer your Social Security number. While the answers to those questions might accidently help an identity thief guess your SSN, its not that much help and not for the reasons Fox19 claims.
The Fox19.com article claims that the first three numbers of your SSN are based on where you were born. If that were true, then, yes, correctly providing the city and state where you were born would help ID thieves guess the first three digits of your SSN.
BUT ... the first three digits are not based on where you were born but instead are based on the zip code given on your SSN application. So it could be in the state where you were born. But in many, many instances, that's not so.
For instance, I was born in Louisiana. At the time that I was born, my parents and siblings lived in Arkansas. However, we moved to Mississippi when I was four years old and, after moving to the Magnolia State, my parents applied for my SSN. So the first three digits of my SSN match one of the various sets of 3 digit numbers for Mississippi, not Louisiana where I was born or Arkansas where my family was living when I was born.
Another example - my wife was born in Tennessee but her family lived at the time in Mississippi. Apparently, her parents also applied for her SSN in Mississippi, because the first three numbers of her SSN also match one of the 3 digit Mississippi combinations, but not the same 3 digit combination that I have.
So its simply not as easy as knowing where you are born.
As for the second part of your SSN, called the grouping, correspond to when you applied for your SSN, which does not necessarily relate to when you were born. For instance, my grouping would be approximately 4 years after I was born. My daughter's SSN was also not requested when she was born but years later. Some people get their kids' SSNs as soon as they are born only to lose them later and have to do it all over again.
So feel free to be honest on Facebook about where and when you were born, unless of course you don't want the internet knowing how old you really are.
According to Fox19.com, truthfully answering the Facebook profile questions regarding where you were born and how old you are gives identity thieves enough information to reverse engineer your Social Security number. While the answers to those questions might accidently help an identity thief guess your SSN, its not that much help and not for the reasons Fox19 claims.
The Fox19.com article claims that the first three numbers of your SSN are based on where you were born. If that were true, then, yes, correctly providing the city and state where you were born would help ID thieves guess the first three digits of your SSN.
BUT ... the first three digits are not based on where you were born but instead are based on the zip code given on your SSN application. So it could be in the state where you were born. But in many, many instances, that's not so.
For instance, I was born in Louisiana. At the time that I was born, my parents and siblings lived in Arkansas. However, we moved to Mississippi when I was four years old and, after moving to the Magnolia State, my parents applied for my SSN. So the first three digits of my SSN match one of the various sets of 3 digit numbers for Mississippi, not Louisiana where I was born or Arkansas where my family was living when I was born.
Another example - my wife was born in Tennessee but her family lived at the time in Mississippi. Apparently, her parents also applied for her SSN in Mississippi, because the first three numbers of her SSN also match one of the 3 digit Mississippi combinations, but not the same 3 digit combination that I have.
So its simply not as easy as knowing where you are born.
As for the second part of your SSN, called the grouping, correspond to when you applied for your SSN, which does not necessarily relate to when you were born. For instance, my grouping would be approximately 4 years after I was born. My daughter's SSN was also not requested when she was born but years later. Some people get their kids' SSNs as soon as they are born only to lose them later and have to do it all over again.
So feel free to be honest on Facebook about where and when you were born, unless of course you don't want the internet knowing how old you really are.
July 06, 2009
Study finds that SSNs can be guessed from data found on social networking sites
The following is a quote from an article by David Olmos and appearing on http://www.bloomberg.com/:
"Social Security numbers, commonly used by criminals in identity theft, can be guessed using information found on Internet social networks such as Facebook and MySpace and other public sources, a study found.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University used the information they gleaned to predict, in one try, the first five digits of a person’s Social Security number 44 percent of the time for 160,000 people born between 1989 and 2003. The study appears today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Annual losses from identity theft totaled $49 billion, according to a 2007 report from Javelin Strategy & Research, a Pleasanton, California, market-research company. About 8.4 million U.S. adults were victims of identity theft that year, with losses averaging $5,720 a person, according to Javelin’s figures.
'We live in a precarious time, where knowledge of a Social Security number, along with other information about one’s name and date of birth, is sometimes sufficient to impersonate another individual,' said Alessandro Acquisti, the study’s lead author, in a telephone interview.
Acquisti, an economist at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School of Public Policy and Management in Pittsburgh, and computer scientist Ralph Gross used records from the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File to search for statistical patterns in the Social Security numbers of people. They obtained birth data from voter registration lists, online white pages, social networking sites and other sources, he said.
Birth Data
Birth data are key to figuring out a Social Security number because the first three of the nine digits are assigned based on where a person lived at the time of obtaining a Social Security card, said Acquisti. Information about how the Social Security number is assigned is publicly available on a government Web site, the authors said.
'The first five digits are very easy to predict, while the last four are harder,' Acquisti said. Identity thieves can sometimes obtain the last four digits of a Social Security number if they have other personal information, he said.
The study arose from Acquisti’s research into why millions of people reveal personal information, such as birth date and home towns, on social networking sites. Such information can be had easily from people who don’t block access by changing their Web site security settings, Acquisti said.
'The default setting on sites such as Facebook, when you create a personal profile, is that it is visible to anyone in your network unless you change the settings,' Acquisti said.
Cyber Criminals
Some evidence exists that cyber criminals already are using statistical analysis to work out Social Security numbers, Acquisti said.
When Social Security numbers were first issued in 1936, their purpose was more like a bank account number than a means for authenticating a person’s identity, said Acquisti.
Because use of these numbers is so widespread among financial institutions, health-care providers and other organizations, it’s difficult for consumers to take steps to insure their numbers remain private, he said.
'If a movie rental company asks for your number to be a member, you can easily bypass that by going to another company,' Acquisti said. 'But if your health insurer wants the number, now you are talking about something different. If you refuse to give it, that could be costly or dangerous to you.'
Credit-reporting companies use Social Security numbers to match personal information, which also leads to identity theft, said Robert Ellis Smith, of the Privacy Journal, a newsletter based in Providence, Rhode Island."
Interesting. One more reason to require exact matches of Social Security numbers, since the first five are often the same for siblings, for example, since they are often obtained at the same time in the same place.
"Social Security numbers, commonly used by criminals in identity theft, can be guessed using information found on Internet social networks such as Facebook and MySpace and other public sources, a study found.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University used the information they gleaned to predict, in one try, the first five digits of a person’s Social Security number 44 percent of the time for 160,000 people born between 1989 and 2003. The study appears today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Annual losses from identity theft totaled $49 billion, according to a 2007 report from Javelin Strategy & Research, a Pleasanton, California, market-research company. About 8.4 million U.S. adults were victims of identity theft that year, with losses averaging $5,720 a person, according to Javelin’s figures.
'We live in a precarious time, where knowledge of a Social Security number, along with other information about one’s name and date of birth, is sometimes sufficient to impersonate another individual,' said Alessandro Acquisti, the study’s lead author, in a telephone interview.
Acquisti, an economist at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School of Public Policy and Management in Pittsburgh, and computer scientist Ralph Gross used records from the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File to search for statistical patterns in the Social Security numbers of people. They obtained birth data from voter registration lists, online white pages, social networking sites and other sources, he said.
Birth Data
Birth data are key to figuring out a Social Security number because the first three of the nine digits are assigned based on where a person lived at the time of obtaining a Social Security card, said Acquisti. Information about how the Social Security number is assigned is publicly available on a government Web site, the authors said.
'The first five digits are very easy to predict, while the last four are harder,' Acquisti said. Identity thieves can sometimes obtain the last four digits of a Social Security number if they have other personal information, he said.
The study arose from Acquisti’s research into why millions of people reveal personal information, such as birth date and home towns, on social networking sites. Such information can be had easily from people who don’t block access by changing their Web site security settings, Acquisti said.
'The default setting on sites such as Facebook, when you create a personal profile, is that it is visible to anyone in your network unless you change the settings,' Acquisti said.
Cyber Criminals
Some evidence exists that cyber criminals already are using statistical analysis to work out Social Security numbers, Acquisti said.
When Social Security numbers were first issued in 1936, their purpose was more like a bank account number than a means for authenticating a person’s identity, said Acquisti.
Because use of these numbers is so widespread among financial institutions, health-care providers and other organizations, it’s difficult for consumers to take steps to insure their numbers remain private, he said.
'If a movie rental company asks for your number to be a member, you can easily bypass that by going to another company,' Acquisti said. 'But if your health insurer wants the number, now you are talking about something different. If you refuse to give it, that could be costly or dangerous to you.'
Credit-reporting companies use Social Security numbers to match personal information, which also leads to identity theft, said Robert Ellis Smith, of the Privacy Journal, a newsletter based in Providence, Rhode Island."
Interesting. One more reason to require exact matches of Social Security numbers, since the first five are often the same for siblings, for example, since they are often obtained at the same time in the same place.
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