Lifehacker: Guarding Sacred SSN’s
Lifehacker had an interesting update today about social security cards and guarding your numbers. It’s nearly commonplace today to hand out your card or number, which is very strange since it seems to also be nearly commonplace to have your identity stolen. They had an interesting brief post, linked to a Time article, about how to keep that precious SSN of yours a secret.
Requests to provide our Social Security numbers have become so common
that many people just assume they have no choice but to hand it over. That’s not actually true…
Now, what I began to wonder was just why people – in the presumed age of hyper-identity theft – would continue to hand over their social security cards and not think of this on their own. Why would they simply give in to whatever the apparent “authority” of the moment was and potentially risk their social and federally registered identity? That doesn’t make any sense. To me, at least.
Why didn’t people come up wth the idea on their own to first ask if it was necessary and then go with another option instead. It seems brainless to me to be on the one hand worried about identity theft, and on the other hand to just pop out your social security card when asked for it. Sometimes the habits of people in this country astound me. But the good news is, if you’re a reader of the Lifehacker blog, then you’ve got a method to not hand in your precious numbers when you’re next asked for the card.
