guard your identity

By anders pearson 29 Apr 2001

i always thought it was silly that most schools use students’ social security numbers as keys for all their databases. i know that at columbia at least, you have to give your SSN to register for or drop classes, pay your tuition, get financial aid, get a transcript, and just about everything else that you might want to do. it always bothered me. what disturbed me even more was that no one else ever seemed at all bothered by it. “what’s the big deal? it’s just a number.” is the unspoken logic.

well, here’s one reason you might want to think twice before handing over your SSN to the next person who asks for it.

what’s really bad though is how common that the SSN is used for identification. it was never intended for that. early versions of SSN cards explicitly stated on back that they were “not to be used for identification purposes.” the desire for a unique id for every person in the country is understandable from the standpoint of the organizations that need to track large numbers of users but there have got to be better ways. there is just no reason that SSN’s should be considered adequate for identification. they’re no longer safe; literally hundreds of organizations from the government to credit card companies to schools know any given person’s SSN. it’s relatively easy to find out someone’s SSN (dumpster diving, anyone?). yet it’s still treated like some kind of secret key.

also, from a privacy standpoint, unique identification numbers for citizens are a somewhat frightening concept. it creeps me out anyway.