Social Security Number: A Tool for Identity Thefts
The Social-Security Number is a unique identity tool that differentiates out from all other individuals in your neighborhood, your town and your country. As such, it is often made use of by fraudulent people involved in Identity Thefts, who make use of this unique number to break into your finances and create severe anomalies. As such, you need to be very discreet and judgmental before you actually decide to share this number with anyone. Regulations have limited the number of people who actually need access to this number – it is limited to your employers, the financial institutions with which you transact, the Motor Vehicles Department and some other governmental agencies, mainly.
Hence, if someone calls you up and asks you to provide them with the Social-Security Number, you have to be very tactful and judgmental before you do so. One tactful way to ask them is to ascertain whether they needed the whole number from you or if they had the ability to identify who you are, if only provided with the last four digits (commonly adopted by credit card concerns these days). Periodically have your credit report checked, you can download your 3 credit reports easily from the internet – certain sites that can prove very useful include free-creditreports.net..
Make a thorough check to improve your credit score from the report to notice any unusual entries that you are not aware of and if you find any such anomalies, immediately inform the concerned authorities.
