Why bother trying to keep your social security number safe?
 

I got 4 wonderful letters in the mail informing me that a data breach at a medical records company had compromised my social security number, full name and address along with that of my wife and two of my kids. GREAT! So I call the hotline to find out what's going on. The first question they ask me for security purposes in my full name, then my address and finally the last 4 of my social. I said "you're kidding right? You do know the person who hacked the server now has the info you're asking me for"
Sooooo, I call the medical records company wanting to know what encryption they use or if the info was encrypted at all. No one seems to be able to answer what I'd think is a very easy question to answer which leads me to believe the answer is "none"
So now I've spent the better part of my life doing as much as is possible to protect my social security number only to have a third party medical records company be careless with it.

Why the hell didn't I just give out my social freely and cut out the middleman? This is ridiculous, companies don't take protecting our private information as seriously as we do and yet demand that information at every turn.

But bless the mental midgets at the medical records company, they provided me with a complimentary 2 year subscription to protectmyID which by the way is totally useless unless they provide a subscription to the 3 bureau service offered... which they didn't. So now my info is out there but at least I have this useless 2 year subscription to make me feel better.

When I checked into the hospital for my hip replacement operation one of the questions they asked was for my SS number. I informed them that ONLY my employer and my bank get that information because it is required by law. NO one else gets it. He insisted he had to have it to get to the next screen. I told him it was 555-55-5555 and he entered than and all was fine.

When I called one local utility to tell them my father had died and I will now be paying the bill on the utilities until I can sell the house I get the same request. She even said it was a law they had to have have it. I told her to get the supervisor on the line. The supervisor said they HAD to have have it and I said no you don't. There must be some other way. After several minutes of arguing she admitted my drivers license number would be OK. Bingo.

Lots of places ask, no one gets it except my bank (actually a credit union) and my employer.

Welcome to the 21 century.
Haven't had my SS number stolen to my knowledge.
However my credit card got hacked along with a million others, thanks homedepot.
Nobody gives a rats a** about protecting our infor.
There's value in the way we use do business imop.

I'm still trying to figure out how the company viewed the Xray and MRI for me as well as Xrays on two of my kids and another procedure for my wife got our SS numbers. The only way I can see that happening is the hospital that performed the procedures provided it to the company that reviews them. I never filled out any paperwork for FW Radiology yet somehow they ended up with my social which then got shared with another party who handles their medical records. I'm not very happy about that and most certainly not when you consider the procedures were covered by insurance. There was no need for them to have the information.

It was pretty funny when the CEO of Lifelock had someone apply for an RV loan using his info & SSN.

There are no good credit protection providers at the moment. Glen's solution is the very best.

I'm looking into calling the credit bureaus and having a credit freeze placed on my wife and I.

Plenty of threads on PPOT about this. I've had mine frozen with all three agencies for MANY years. It's easy peasy these days and IS the only way I know of to protect yourself. EVERYONE should do this imo...a no brainer.

Unless the government changes things (don't hold your breath), when you go on Medicare your Medicare number is your SSAN , it is printed in big numbers on your Medicare Card and every provider I have dealt with insists on seeing your card as soon as you sign in for your appointment, etc... and no, they will not accept your just telling them your number. So if you have your drivers license and Medicare card in your billfold, all the info anyone would need to steal your ID is right there...

Did you eat at a restaurant lately?
Your fingerprints and DNA swab is right there.
Next gen ID.

The system is compromised by design.

I'm a germophobe, I don't eat out that often. :D