You're more than just a Social Security Number...you might be 10 of them!
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by Ron Daly
I read an amazing piece of information in today's CUNA News Now that explained that more than 20 million Americans - that's roughly six percent of the population - have more than one social security number.
The study also found that rather than serving as a unique identifier, more than 40 million SSNs are associated with multiple people. ID Analytics examined more than 280 million SSNs to determine discrepancies.
I'm no Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but I don't think that's how it's supposed to work.
According to the same article, most of these duplications or discrepancies are simple data entry errors. Still, scary to think that someone with my social security number would be doing various misdeeds and it might come back on me. Thank God for my credit monitoring service...maybe statistics like this are a way to sell more of the same features at your individual credit union?
The worst part of all this? There are 27,000 social security numbers in play at this very moment that are associated with ten or more people. Are you kidding me?
Food for thought for you money-minded folks reading this: if we were paying interest on each of these numbers, imagine the backup withholding nightmare this could be.
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