Your Social Security number is an identifier that’s as unique as your fingerprint, belonging to you and you alone — that is, until a criminal steals those digits that can open the door to financial fraud and identity theft.
If you think your Social Security number can’t be stolen, don’t be so sure. Criminals can obtain the number through major data breaches at large companies, hospital systems, small businesses and organizations and then can use the number fraudulently and/or sell it to other scammers.
Thieves can also obtain your Social Security number if they steal your wallet or purse, hack into unsecured websites where you’re provided the digits or pose as a government agency asking for your Social Security number, according to the Social Security Administration. If you don’t shred documents that show your Social Security number, scammers might even find it in your trash.
Read on for the top ways hackers and scammers can use your stolen Social Security number for criminal and identity theft purposes.
Link it to other personal information
Criminals won’t typically get far with your Social Security number alone, but that’s not a problem for dedicated scammers.
“If somebody has just a Social Security number and no other information tied to it, the number is not as valuable,” says Eva Velasquez, president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), a nonprofit organization…
