10 Riskiest Places to Give Your Social Security Number [Kiplinger] “Here’s how to lower the chances of your number falling into the wrong hands — and what to do if it does.”
Holiday Non-Shopping: 7 Items Worth Waiting For [Money Watch] “Here are the top 7 items that you may want to put on your post-holiday shopping list.”
How to Pick Your Next Computer [Smart Money] “Here is my annual fall computer buyers’ guide, a simplified road map to the key decisions shoppers must make.”
10 Things Recruiters Won’t Tell You [Wall Street Journal] “#1. There are better ways to find a job.”
20 Places to Find Free Books Online [Northern Cheapskate] “The following sites provide free books that can be enjoyed online, downloaded to your computer, or transferred to an e-reader or MP3 player.”
I really don’t know what’s worse in regards to social security numbers — the fact that they’re required for virtually any financial or medical transaction or the fact that an easily predictable database identity attribute has so much power.
Hopefully it’s changed but when I was in the Army, our SSN’s were thrown around all over the place. We had them stenciled on our duffel bags, under our names on our lockers, and every order listed them — I still have a binder full of SSN’s of thousand’s of guys in my old units from mobilization orders and mass awards.
I love that SSN list:
1. Universities and colleges
2. Banking and financial institutions
3. Hospitals
4. State governments
5. Local government
6. Federal government
7. Medical businesses (These are businesses that concentrate on services and products for the medical field, such as distributors of diabetes or dialysis supplies, medical billing services, pharmaceutical companies, etc.)
8. Non-profit organizations
9. Technology companies
10. Health insurers and medical offices
Soooo… anybody, in other words– giving your SSN to *anybody* is risky.
Gee, thanks Kiplinger, that was helpful.
Lol, yeah that SSN article was a waste of my time to read.
The reality is that someone probably already has your SSN, but hasn’t done anything with it yet. Perhaps it just gets passed around through sales of illegally obtained info.
In the current U.S. society, there is no full-proof way to guard against someone unauthorized obtaining your SSN. In fact, it’s even possible that “insiders” who work for these institutions will obtain it for their own uses. Many people in the general population are concerned over “cyber attacks” and the bad guys out there, but they fail to consider insider threat, which is a HUGE vulnerability in all of these systems.
Interesting that the title of the article is “How to Pick Your Next Computer”, but the article is entirely about portables….laptops, netbooks, tablets. I guess nobody buys desktop computers anymore?
Why does the list of 10 things recruiters won’t tell you have only 3 items on it?
Because they want you to click through to some other site, then see the list in several bite-sized, ad-laden pages.